Alot of comments regarding roleplay but how many opportunities exist to roleplay outside of medbay, MPs(would NOT recommend) and the CL/CC?
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I think that is the issue being addressed. It is a MRP server where most of its players don’t get to RP want it or not, to put it bluntly.
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The PvP nature of our game makes consistent roleplay quite difficult. At least, roleplay in terms of physical communication in a longform manner. We don’t really have issues with roleplay from a mechanical issue, is my belief.
Our PvE server showcases the ideal environment for a more communicative roleplay experience. Since in PvE, not only is the population far lower but you are not under extreme time pressure to act optimally, especially since the nature of the game mode is cooperative versing AI, not competitive versing other players.
(insert those studies which support and conclude the average Human can only realistically engage and coordinate with around 6 to 20 people before communication and organisation completely break down)
It would be akin to asking a League of Legends or DOTA player to roleplay in the middle of the game, even if it wasn’t a ranked game, its sub-optimal at best.
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It would be hopelessly idealistic to think consistent roleplay would ever not be at odds with the gameplay loop but that’s not really what I think should happen nor want to happen anyway. It’s fun to just play the game and I’m down to just do that sometimes. What PvE has isn’t attainable here, but what is (and it does happen, anyway) are more grassroots and spontaneous when there’s a will for it.
Unlike in a MOBA, everyone is ostensibly playing a character of their own design. The round typically doesn’t end catastrophically if you sit out a bit as a rifleman (unless it’s lowpop) and there’s at least a few lulls in the fighting at times. The main natural times to talk tend to be the start (hampered by prep) and the end if a victory is all but assured or you evacuated. I’ve had pretty good experiences with that in bravo (being the fobbits has its benefits) and charlie, but I have seen alpha and delta have their own cool things going on as well. Essentially, it’s not really a lost cause. I think there’s just a mismatch of expectations of how far we really expect this to go.
Steering back to the synthetic whitelist specifically. I’m aware we have dialogue checks going on but I have noticed (and I’m guilty of this myself) that gamey speak bleeds into the dialogue at times. Probably just something we ought to be more mindful of.
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And most importantly:
They are a biomechanical construct that is manufactured, they have “white circulation fluid” instead of blood. They have processor as their “brain”. They can be turned “on” and “off”. They have programming that can be externally accessed and changed.
What is the difference between a robot and synthetic from Aliens/CM?
Synths are not Replicants from Bladerunner, which probably got you confused.
They are a robot made to look and act like human. And for our purposes they should be more robot-like as G1s to make things more RP oriented and interesting. Roleplaying a human with some quirks is something a Combat Corresponder / Corporate Liason / Mess Technican / CE / CMO other shipside RP role should do, not Synth.
Contents can stay the same. It is not about the gear, Synth can have access to everything, but abilities. Some kind of “chip” or something they choose to insert into themselfs in their room and then can replace in the same room at the cost of only some time, like half a minute, or something.
Maybe current modern synths are supposed to be jack-of-all-trades (master of all), but G1s aren’t. And it only makes sense that crappy Almayer gets a crappy G1 synth. It is the colony synth that should be advanced, but we have it the other way around.
For our purposes Synth being able to do everything just encourages command and synth himself to powergame. Why as CIC member you would not order Synth to go planetside to build cades, fix bones, do a bit of JTAC work, a bit of intel and rescue important dead marines? Why as Synth player you would not do it?
But slower, less skilled (but sturdier) G1 synth solves that issue, actual doctor is still better planetside than synth, actual MT is still better planetside than synth.
Then it doesn’t even need those “chips”. Thanks to all of that synths would have no reason to always go planetside and always work at 100% efficiency. This means that they have time to RP and because they are a G1 synth, not a robot that perfectly acts and looks like human, they can actually RP a robot with programmed “quirks” instead of actually roleplaying a human.
Synths can do too much, too fast and too good. So it is natural that their mechanical adventages will be used in a primarly PvP TDM server. There is a reason Mess Tech/CC/CL doesn’t have the same problem that Synth does with RP.
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I feel like synth WL is not taking into consideration the current state of the game. At least not with its current expectations on RP. I truly hope these threads are food for thought for the dev team. I believe this game can really be more than a PvP game for most if not all of its players.
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Synths are not robots; they are characters played by well players.
Being reductive to characters is a bad thing. - They are made to be people, its why we have banter over “We prefer artificial humans” because that’s basically what they are in both lore, and how CM works.
(edit for just further clarification here, the main point I am trying to do here - is point across that the view that synths have to act robotic, or behave like robots is heavily reductive to creative freedoms and RP; Generation 1’s also are not as robotic as people like to believe, and some Generation 3’s don’t even know they are synths or robotic; just that they are artificial.)
People carry this wild misconception that since they are Artifical or biomechanics that therefore means that their character has to be reduced to Bot-xx 
when literately they are made to people like actual humans.
The reduction of character to mere robot will basically never happen. As Synths are not Joes, they can freely think - decide and are self directing.
The horror that comes with synths is the questions around their autonomy; they have to follow company orders or what ever faction they are apart of; and so it brings into question their relationships they built, and how eaisly that can change since they are so heavily entrusted.
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??? “Xenomorphs are not biomechanical parasitic aliens, they are characters played by players.” The same logic.
Bishop said he preffers “artificial person”, not “human”, a distinction.
The ironic part is that not acting robotic is limiting synth RP to a regular human with quirk. Hippie human, british butler human, caring grandma human, spiritual human, so on and so forth.
Regular synth doesn’t act that much different from a CL, or CC. Sure, it is lorefriendly, but it is boring.
I might be biased here heavily, I hate robots made to look and act exactly like humans. Terminators with a human flesh over their endoskeleton is where I draw a line and anything that crosses it, as in is more human than Arnold’s terminator, is just boring in my opinion.
And this shows in CM’s synths. There is nothing interesting to RP with a synth. Oh it is something that looks and acts exactly as a human, but with a quirk.
Any good CL has a quirk, any good CC has a quirk, any good Mess Tech has a quirk, so on and so forth.
Synth has nothing unique because of this fixation to never let them act robotic. In a regular round they really can’t do anything unique, they build cades like any comtech, they perform surgeries as any doctor etc.
No, I don’t want synths to walk around saying “*beep *boop commencing relocation procedure” (that is what Working Joes are for), but I don’t want them to be just regular-ass humans.
And you should too.
Yet their character is reduced to mere human with a quirk.
Literally never comes into play.
And it would be no different if Synths were replaced by special vat-grown super-humans with exeptional genes, education and brain-washed.
Or maybe it would, because Synths are outright stated to not be affected by emotions in their decision making.
This pretty much means that every Synth is essentialy a high-functioning psychopath, there is no real “friendship”, or any “relationship” with a Synth. As soon as you stop being usefull, or beneficial to Synth, it should have no qualms to do whatever to you as long as its programming allows.
So there is no “great unknown”, or “horror” besides when it re-writes its own program.
In the end: Synths should become more unique for more RP opportunities and their uniqueness comes from the fact that they are robots. Yes, they are robots, they fall under the definition of a “robot”, if they are not “human”, if they are not “alien” and if they are not “animal”, or “plant”, or “mushroom” (and so on and so forth) then they are a “robot”.
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I find it so funny neither of you have brought up the fact they’re literally called androids as well as synths and artificial people, android is literally just another term for robot, also i mean, in canon ignorant marines call synths robots.
though cabel is wrong for his assessment of “synths need to be robotic” because in lore they do actually do things differently depending on the synth.
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99% of what I am trying to say is that Synths ain’t robots because people control them, that is what I am pushing for
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Yeah they’re robots but they’re not literally robotic like working joes.
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Why we are even discussing it? Is this some kind of revelation that SS13 CM synths are not actually an advanced AI algorithm?
Aliens ain’t aliens because people control them. Yautja ain’t yautja because people control them.
Because I find it obvious that the are indeed robots. “Android” is just a term for a humanoid robot.
Synths are robots and marines calling them that is not being “ignorant”.
I am not wrong, because I do not contest lore. I understand that in lore they are mostly in the boring territory of wasted potential. They are robots and it is interesting, but they act like humans and never deviate which is boring.
Synths need to be more robotic to be more interesting.
What is more interesting, a human talking about spirituality, or humanoid robot doing the same? Humanoid robot brings the robot perspective so you can be creative. Human, or something acting and looking completly like a human, doesn’t bring a new perspective.
I am more inclined to talk with vanilla SS13 janitor borg about stuff than with CM synth (it is not about players, I have to clarify because you will probably get a funny idea that I am dissing synth players instead of a CM synth as a concept).
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He is kinda right though. Because as it stands, synths aren’t really different then a superhero ingame. Because none of them exude that “Cannot feel actual emotions, just replicate them”. Like sure, i’ve had great conversations with synths. But they were all just human talking to a human. Not a human talking to a synth.
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I meant the marine was ignorant because he clearly hates robots.
Tell me, what exactly changes other then the robot looking less human? because either way you’re probably gonna get the same conversation because you’re still talking to a non human robot in both cases, except one looks less human then the other.
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Can i recommend that you include a list of companies that make synths? Most players probably feel restricted to W-Y as that’s going to be the main company that everyone knows, meaning that most synths will end up as W-Y and make it feel like they’re the only company that makes them.
And yes i know people can ask for advice in the discord but i think most people won’t even know there’s other companies that make synths other then W-Y.
I mean the various different companies aren’t even elaborated on in the synth names post.
If i’m a person who knows nothing about the lore how am i supposed to know this means “Lassle Bionationale” the lead competitor against W-Y in the field of xenomorph research.
Also are there any plans for 3WE synths and if so what are their differences to the other factions like the ones listed in this PR.
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so generally speaking a lot of the logic behind it was, you can craft your own company to support your synths lore. kinda as another thing you can talk about. But, we can actually push for people making their own company lore if that is something that people are interested in doing as a way to develop the world we are in! (as a disclaimer you don’t need to write your own company lore for synth apps, rather - we can just encourage people and be like "hey you dont have to to WY for your synth you can have your own custom company)
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The feeling/mood/atmosphere changes for both players. If your character you are playing as is less “human” you will naturaly roleplay less like a regular human too. And if you interact with character that doesn’t look completly human, you naturaly treat it less as you would regular human.
In “first” case where “non-human robot” looks exactly like a human, we both treat that character as human (or atleast we are more likely to do it, consciously and subconsciously).
If instead of a another human I see a vanilla SS13 borg sprite, we both treat that character as less of a human (or atleast we are more likely to do it, consciously and subconsciously).
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