Survivor Specific Rules

[Mycroft Macarthur]

Suggestion Title: Survivor Specific Rules

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): improve survivor roleplay and decrease issues by listing specific rules for survivors.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): this will cut down on administrative issues by clearly defining what the survivors know, what they are and are not allowed to do, the extent of their relationship with the marines and more.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): we have already covered this topic to some extent in a post by the same name in general discussion but its time we turned this into an actual suggestion.

it has become clear to me that survivors, and their role in the roleplay as a whole need to be MUCH more clearly defined, given the rules oriented administrative heavy style of this server, survivors cannot be allowed to exist in the vague, undefined state they are in now as i am not alone in having heard different and sometimes CONFLICTING things about the nature of survivors from both admins and players alike, survivors need an entry in the rules SPECIFIC TO THEM to cater to the unique nature of their gameplay, this needs to include both definitions from a roleplay perspective as well as hard line rule regarding whether we can or can NOT do something, here are a few points i feel must be touched upon, admins have threatened to punish me or ban me numerous times for doing things other players have claimed they have been able to do with nary a peep, i know i am not the only one who has experienced this, you cannot expect us to follow a set of rules when those rules DO NOT EVEN EXIST, this is why i am asking you guys to come together and let us know what the rules for survivors are, i had some thoughts on the kinds of things i feel we should need to know and rules which need to be defined, as long as people can play as survivor we need some kind of rules RIGHT NOW and we cant afford to wait for some future update to give us all the answers when the various rule violations may not always make sense, ill list a few of the potential issues now.



1. what the survivors know about the aliens - we know the survivors are basically survivors of the alien attack, but that's kind of all that we're told, the marines are expected to rescue the survivors who can then provide intel but what...does that mean survivors are just a way for marines to metagame? do they know about how aliens travel through the vents? about chestbursting and the nature of facehuggers? do they have full, complete details or just basic stuff

2. what the survivors know PERIOD - are we even aware a distress signal was sent? we may not necessarily have been a member of the bridge crew and they didn't necessarily broadcast everything they did to the entire crew, if so many of the crew were killed with the ship so relatively intact, with NONE of the pods having been launched or an emergency shuttle called, odds are good the ships crew fell to the aliens REALLY REALLY FAST and they may not have been able to tell the rest of the crew a distress signal went out, even then that isn't the same as knowing someone is on the way, even in real life boats and planes have something similar to distress signals for times of emergency and they save you....what, a quarter of the time? a third? half? that is our tiny planet, not the vast reaches of deep space, can we set up the engine? hack doors? (and we're basically fucked if you say we cant since almost everything is behind a locked door) tear down walls?

3. assigned roles - survivors typically roleplay as whatever job they feel like they would have fulfilled but in a discussion with an admin i was once told i DID have a job i was assigned by the game, i was roleplaying as if i was in the engineering team but i was told the game said i was a cargo technician....the problem was the only way to determine the job in question was by checking the traitor panel, which is admin only, you cant expect us to base ourselves off of information we DON'T have access to, are we allowed to choose whatever we want to rp as or should we ahelp at the start of each round and ask what our job was?

4. harming or murdering marines - are we ever for ANY rp reason ever allowed to be suspicious, afraid of or even hostile to the marines? how do we even know they ARE marines? even in real life today ANYONE can get military grade body armor and weapons for the right price, sometimes it isnt even illegal, these people could be random mercenaries or slavers for all we know, hell if we're employees of weyland yutani we might be pissed these people are destroying what the company would view as an important prize for our bioweapons program, even then how would we recognize the colonial marines? for all we know the nostromo is run by china, they wouldn't recognize the armed forces of a FOREIGN government, i once even heard of a survivor starting a MUTINY against the marine CO in which other marines joined in and this survivor wasn't even given a slap on the wrist (i was in the actual round but it was too confusing for me to fully understand what was going on)

5. chasing aliens down - i have been told we are not allowed to chase down and murder the aliens, why not? wouldn't we be aware of what the aliens are and what they can do? would we not have significant reason to fear....even hate and despise them? if anything there is significant IC reason for us to want to attack and do harm to the aliens (now, whether or not fighting the aliens is STUPID, is another matter altogether and can depend heavily on our equipment, speaking of which....)

6. Looting - we are also being told we are not allowed to wear sec hardsuits but that does not make any sense, we may need to travel through the exterior of the station as it may be the safest route to get around, we are literally on our own, i think once someone was told they couldn't grab the guns from the armory but we literally start COMPLETELY NUDE, it is our JOB DEFINITION to do the utmost we can to survive and we have no actual superiors to report to, our very survival can hinge upon what we can find, scavenge or craft and there is no real IC reason for us to NOT be wearing and utilizing the absolute best equipment we can find, its not like even if we knew the marines were coming we expect them to bring us spare weapons and body armor just for us, telling survivors to not wear sec hardsuits constitutes metagaming them since it is only being done to give the aliens an advantage against them, there is not a single IC reason they wouldn't make use of it, so are survivors allowed or not allowed to use them? (why would we follow marine regs anyways? they're a separate organization, perhaps even a foreign government)

7. chloral hydrate - like #6 are we likewise not allowed to use chloral hydrate? what if we were research or medical staff? would we know about whether or not it worked? if so would we be allowed to use it?

8. relationship to the marines - are we allowed to order the CO around and ask for the shuttle so we can go home? are we basically just cargo that the marines need to move back to the sulaco immediately? are we allowed to maintain our independence the moment the marines show or are we basically prisoners? i myself as survivor have been given an ID, armed and then sent back into the fray by marine CO's, some have told me they weren't allowed to do that while some cheered us on.

9. can LO's give us custom ID's befitting our unique positions should the rp come to it?

10. can we go anywhere on the sulaco which we can physically enter or are we barred from some areas like the marines are?


those are the ones which came to me now but im sure there are others which can be brought up



Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): this wouldn't need to be added to the game itself since this does not represent content or code changes, this would be a purely administrative issue, so the moment an agreement of sorts is made, this could already be considered as having been implemented.

[xomega000x]

I find this interesting, especially that at the start of a round if you're a survivor, the "Metamorphs" would come rushing to the survivor spawn-points...

I spent like 15 minutes In a locker, next to my survivor friend as an Alien was hunting for us...

And yeah, we should sometimes be let to be in those special places our jobs were supposed to be, or at least somewhere where actual weapons can be found...

Here's a scenario I've been in as a CO, My Marines found some survivors and they were so scared they pretended to have a bomb ready to blow, and how my Marines like to joke around, when hey came upon the survivors, and the survivors asked whom they are, they answered "Your worst nightmare"... When they arrived on the Sulaco they went straight for the disposals area, where I followed them in anger... That ended up me being Hostage and killing one of them.

Oh, one more thing, the fire-axe needs improvement on Damage.

[Mycroft Macarthur]

regarding the fire axe in specific i agree that it needs more damage (fire axe does less damage then knife when wielded with both hands? wtf?) however i feel that increasing its utility would be far superior value, for example, modding it so you can destroy airlock doors (something you would actually use it for if you were using it for its intended, designed purpose) or modding it so when double clicking lockers with any item if your harm intent is set, instead of trying to open the locker you BEAT THE LOCKER since you are trying to forcibly open it, this could take several hits (especially if you have a shitty ass weapon like a toolbox or some shit like that), the fire axe would be IDEAL for this since this is exactly the sort of thing it is DESIGNED for.

in fact, its abit meta that we always know to go to escape or the bar for the shotgun or the pistol since we're acting on knowledge we have beforehand, but its a kind of meta which you almost have to forgive because we're so screwed without it, if a new way to forcibly open lockers is not implemented (maybe even make it item specific, such as using fire axes) then we have to do it or we're completely helpless till marines show.

sprinkling a few more fire axe cabinets around the ship, if you dont take yourselves too seriously you could even put in a glass case with a shotgun, "Break in Case of Zombie Apocalypse" to give survivors abit more punch, i know you guys removed half the cool shit to cut down on marine looting but that punishes survivors too for a crime that in their case, was never a crime to begin with.

[BruceNorris]

I think this is very important. Good thread, hopefully these will be addressed sometime soon... Get's my approval!

[Sailor Dave]

I'd like this clarified also. I'm not sure what changes to make to survivors unless I know how they're intended to play out.

[Davidchan]

Survivors need to be better fleshed out before we start enforcing rules on them.

Spawning naked on the station, makes no sense. Giving them limited knowledge of how the infection works, (facehuggers, warriors dragging people into vents, ect...) is fine. Telling them not to loot or act in their best interest after being the lone survivors of a crew of 50? Goes against the point of the role. They hid, or they fought, and they evaded capture. They should start with tools, an ID card and maybe some food or first aid kit. I'd even go so far as to say giving them a gun.

Is there a way to receive random loot? Randomly spawned items from screwdrivers and basic power cells, to empty soda cans all the way up to insulated gloves, an energy pistol or even the Captian's Spare ID? One of the fun things about survivor is trying new plans and hiding spots.

[Mycroft Macarthur]

the problem is that, rules are ALREADY being enforced on survivors, the issue is that admins are enforcing the marine specific rules on them, which only fits maybe a third of the time, the rest of the time survivor players are being told things which are confusing or which can contradict, people playing survivors need rules and information to go off of RIGHT NOW, we can always come up with additional content in terms of items or code changes to give them more advantage or roleplay over time but something like server rules are something which need to be defined RIGHT AWAY because this vague, constantly changing shit is not working out.

you can do something which is okay THIS round, and then NOT okay the next two rounds, okay for the three rounds that follow and against the rules again the rest of the day, this kind of shit doesn't fly and i dont think its an unreasonable request to ask the rules and roleplay for them be a little more clarified if they're going to be in the game.

[TopHatPenguin]

Survivors need to be better fleshed out before we start enforcing rules on them.

Spawning naked on the station, makes no sense. Giving them limited knowledge of how the infection works, (facehuggers, warriors dragging people into vents, ect...) is fine. Telling them not to loot or act in their best interest after being the lone survivors of a crew of 50? Goes against the point of the role. They hid, or they fought, and they evaded capture. They should start with tools, an ID card and maybe some food or first aid kit. I'd even go so far as to say giving them a gun.

Is there a way to receive random loot? Randomly spawned items from screwdrivers and basic power cells, to empty soda cans all the way up to insulated gloves, an energy pistol or even the Captian's Spare ID? One of the fun things about survivor is trying new plans and hiding spots.

i'm fairly sure survivors can loot nostromos unless there has been a sudden rule change with that.....

[apophis775]

Locked. If this is still an issue (despite the recent mass rule changes), re-make the thread.