Town Hall Information and Questions Thread

[aloe]

It’s been a while since the last town hall, so the admin team has decided to host one on May 21st⁠, 8pm UTC (4pm EST). We plan to run for about 5 hours with a 30 minute break in the middle so we can get some snacks and whatnot.

The Town Hall will essentially be a ‘public Q&A’ of sorts. We’ll create a channel on our Discord and answer questions posted to this forum thread, with room for follow-up questions if the person who asked the questions wants to do so. Afterwards, we’ll put the channel in the public Discord archive and share our answers to the questions in this forum thread. This will all be publicly viewable.

Further details are listed below. We’ve had a couple town halls before, but this time around, we’re doing things a little differently, so read closely.

Before the Town Hall/Question Guidelines

If you want to ask us a question for the town hall, put it in this forum thread. Unlike previous town halls, we will not have a Discord channel for asking questions. We want to have a reasonable expectation of how many questions we’re going to be answering so we know how much time we can give to each one and make sure we have time to prepare for any of the more “difficult” questions.

Please ask a maximum of 2 questions. Questions can be about pretty much anything related to the game, admin team, or community. Development direction, miscellaneous admin stuff, sprites, rules, game mechanics⁠—whatever.

While there’s no hard rules with respect to questions, here’s some pointers-

• Don’t ask meme questions with no substance at all. Silly questions like “Hat or beret?” are alright (this is a silly game), but things like ‘are floor cluwnes real’ or ‘how do I make meth’ are just wasting time.
  
• Don’t ask things which are specific to one or two people. The idea is that answers are useful, or at least interesting, to the whole community. For example, instead of “why did you ban me”, try “what is the admin team’s general approach to moderation?”; instead of “what do you think about my pull request”, ask “how are pull requests approved?”
  
• Avoid phrasing your question as “‘are there any plans for [feature]” (pathology, matsci, mining, more azones, etc etc etc etc). We get a lot of these questions every town hall, and the honest answer is that most things aren’t planned in advance! Instead, try asking for the thoughts on the matter, e.g. “what are the devs’ issues with [game system]”, “how would you like to see [map/job/mechanic] improved”, etc.
  
• Don’t repeat questions! Skim the thread to check that someone hasn’t already asked your question.
  

You should also mention whether you plan on attending the town hall live, and post your Discord handle if so⁠— we want to make sure you can ask follow-up questions if you want, without wasting time if you don’t plan to. “Maybe” is fine here.

This thread will be locked 48 hours before the town hall starts so we have some time to prepare and don’t get flooded with new questions minutes before the town hall starts.

Please do not make off-topic posts or start arguments—these posts will be deleted.

During the Town Hall

As previously stated, when town hall starts, we’ll create a brand new text channel for it; we’re not gonna hijack #ss13-discussion or a voice channel or anything like that. Everyone can view it, but only admins and people given time for follow-ups can type in it. You’re welcome to discuss the town hall in other channels.

Not every single admin is going to be around for the entire town hall, since we’re spread out across a variety of time zones, but we’ll try to make it if we can. Some admins will still be around moderating the servers and answering ahelps.

In previous years, we answered questions in the order they were asked, but this time around, we may do something different. We currently plan to answer more important questions first and group questions by topic, but the specifics will vary.

Questions will be pinned in the order they’re answered for bookkeeping, and to allow people to jump to questions. This will stop if we run out of pin space; regardless, all the questions and a summary of answers will be posted on the forums after the town hall concludes.

During the town hall, we may start with pre-written responses; we’ll also add to these, and respond to follow-up questions should there be any.

The way that follow-ups work is this:
When we get to your question, we assign you the “Talking Stick” Discord role. This allows you to talk in the town hall channel.
You can then take some time to ask follow-up questions which we’ll answer live. Exact time will vary depending on question volume, but 5 minutes is a fine estimate.
Please keep follow-up questions concise- it’s fine to ask mostly unrelated questions as long as they’re fairly simple. Dumping 2 paragraphs on us during follow-up time will create…. issues.

After the Town Hall

Once town hall is wrapped up, we’ll archive the channel and put it in the public-viewable Discord archive. You might want to stick around; there are often some informal after-parties.

Some time after the town hall, we’ll put a general summary of the town hall questions and answers in this forum thread. It will still be locked⁠—if you’d like to discuss any answers on the forums, feel free to make a separate thread.

See you then!

[ZeWaka]

Question: Is there a current or planned way mentors or other interested players can schedule events on the servers, similar to ones that have occured in the past on the RP servers? It'd likely be useful for event coordinators to be able to reach an audience with the Discord Event system.

Follow-up: not needed

[Kubius]

Q: What are the current thoughts from the team about Nadir? (#7730)

Some particular talking points:

• Whether the map makes sense for addition, and if not, which things make it an unsuitable addition (if it's related to the map, or just a concern about the amount of maps in rotation or somesuch)
  
• How complete the map needs to be before it's considered ready for integration and "mainline testing" - I've run a couple dozen tests on a personal server with some guests and the map is functioning, but the tests never drew a lot of population so a bigger test run would be pretty good
  
• How much interest there is from the dev team wrt developing feature changes that are needed before the map's full launch, particularly core features that would have global ramifications (acid damage on gear, tougher crystal windows, facemelting changes, blob acid vulnerability)
  

(it's somewhat singular in scope but I asked aloe and they said OK)

[Ikea]

Q: How do i piss Regarding interdepartmental cooperation, what things would you like to see in that regard, and what direction do you think it should generally be taken. 

I should probably be there for the event, please ping me (I think we need to specify this but dunno)

[Rmeaper]

Q: Is there any plans for the excess patreon money (if there is any)

[According_tome]

Question 1: What do you think about the current state of rules in roleplaying server and do you want to change them in future ?
Question 2: What do you think about engineering department as whole and what can be better about this department ?
Timezone can cause trouble so I cannot attend.

[swinglow20]

Q: What is the dev team's current stance on added content? (What criteria should we use when brainstorming ideas for content for the server? What is frowned upon versus what is generally accepted)

Q: This is going to sound a little vapid, but bear with me. What is the current direction of the game? The general aesthetic has always been kind of retro tech, but recently a lot of the newer features and elements of the game haven't been so heavily focused on any specific genre or atmosphere (in my opinion.) I know a lot of that has to do with changing of the guard, and it's going to be hard to answer. PRs and content go through Dev vetting and forum feedback, but the player base is constantly shifting. I guess what I'm asking is: would there be a way to nail down a direction for the game without shooting the community in the foot?
To go further than that, how would the dev team like us to encourage engagement on the forums to improve community continuity?

I will not be able to attend the meeting

[unfunnyperson]

Are there any areas in the game you feel are lacking content/features?
If someone were to expand these areas what would you want to see?

Im unlikely to appear at the actual town hall.

[Bartimeus]

Question 1: Has there been any progress made in regards to handling inter-personnal conflicts on the server and in discord? People being people, there are times where words get heated and conversations turn sour, and i believe there is a need for a way to handle those disputes without it always falling to an admin.
This page in particular on the wiki has not seen any work done for the past two years; https://wiki.ss13.co/Dispute_Resolution
Its understandable that setting it up is a tall ordeal and that it is a lenghty process. Is there a way that we, as a community, can help make this happen?

Question 2: How does the administration team feel about the current state of the game as a whole? This includes not just the game itself, but also extends to the people playing in it, the community, the new additions to the game and pretty much anything else! Are we in the best state we've ever been? How can we strive to do better? If something isnt going right, what should be done to correct it?

Do feel encouraged to ping me when the town hall begins, i'll be around.

[NightmarechaMillian]

Here's two I've been meaning to ask:

1) When, if it's still getting worked on, do y'all think you'll have the Nanotrasen home offices azone finished? Furthermore, is there any way I can pitch in?

2) Do you have any intention of adding anyone to the dev team with intention of speeding up github PR process? I don't mean this in a "you should make me dev ; )" way but rather I've noticed, especially in comparison to other servers, there's a lot of untied ends and long waits with regards to getting Pull Rewuests merged or closed on the goon github.

[Waffleloffle]

Q: There's been plenty of discussion, both between the playerbase and the dev team, of giving mutraces more customization options to play with. Is there any easily-to-reference resource with the guidelines for what the dev team would like to see and what they wouldn't for each mutrace and for potentially adding new mutraces in general, so people can try their hand at implementing smaller additions without worrying they'll have to throw out their work? I know the concept of some new styles for cows have been thrown around but ultimately set to the side, due to one of the devs wanting to keep cows as a reference to another BYOND game first and foremost. Apologies for this question meandering, I just want to know how transparent you guys would like to keep these things for future reference.

Q 2 electric boogaloo: What are your thoughts on the fishing system? Are there any interactions like using it in spacial rifts that jump out at you as a fun way to use it?

will probably be around for follow-ups, discord username is wolfolotl and my server nickname is usually some variation of Waffle with my characters tacked on in brackets

[DisturbHerb]

Apologies if these questions get a bit rambly, I am moon-brained.

Since the abolition of public ban appeals, I feel this question is of particular relevance. What is the administration team doing to ensure that game and discord ban appeals are handled responsibly and with due consideration given to all involved parties? I appreciate the rationale behind the closure of appeals to the general public, but I place great personal significance on the ability to understand how the appeals process is implemented in practice and on the standards of behaviour expected of the player base by the administration team.

Secondly, under what circumstances would large mechanical changes/additions made by non-developers be accepted into the game? Things like new/heavily reworked antagonists, mutant races, maybe even roles.

Most likely won't be around for any follow-ups.

[Kotlol]

Question:

Will all jobs get a job reward system to award veterans of their favorite job?

On job rewards it is said certain jobs will get get job rewards later.

However only a handfull of jobs have actual job rewards and only even less have a level system.
Most other job rewards are just hand outs for alternate gear.
Yet some alternate stuff is only locked behind achievements or round purcases like the AI hat.
Also the chaplain has levels but no job rewards wich is even more jarring to me.

So are we going to see a change to this system in the future? It's been a long while since there has been any changes to it.

[MomoBerry]

Sweet, town hall time! Hopefully my questions aren't too scatterbrained. The first question was a bit of a confusing mess, the second one is quick and easy though!

Q#1: What would you like to see for the future direction of the engineering? I'm a big fan of engineering on SS13 as a whole, but I've been confused on what the "plan" or "theme" for engineering is on Goonstation. We've had some significant reworks and changes that people feel conflicted on, and everyone seems to have a different future direction in mind for the department when it comes up in conversations. The department is split up across the station, (Mining/QM, and Engineering/Mechanics) as well. I'm interested in knowing what the devs want for engineering nowadays. Examples being things like new or current round-start engines being made/adjusted, changes to the power network/grid, or removing jobs from engineering into a new department. (Mining, QM)


Q#2: With how high the stable population is and how crowded the maps are during peak hours, is the dev team open to having larger maps than say, donut 3 in rotation? (I know ozy comes to mind, but I mean in general for map design.) I know a lot of the maps were designed for when high pop was half of our current population, and I remember being told that maps that don't have new engine designs aren't really considered to be added to rotation, due to how many TEG based maps are in rotation at the moment.

Thanks, and ping me for the Town Hall if possible!

[glowbold]

Q1: Is there a preference for new game systems/features to stand alone, or be integrated into other game systems on introduction?

Q2: What considerations are taken into account for RP-specific rules and code adjustments?

I should be online for the town hall; feel free to ping on discord @glowbold#5032