buzzie71

Bit late, but Part 3 story segments are now up at http://unityorigins.tumblr.com. The first segment went up on November 1, and new segments have been and will be released every other day until November 19, now at midday Eastern time instead of midnight.

I'm two days late with this, sorry >< but I took a few timings of exiting both spawn ships (starting from the designated spawn point and ending when I've stepped off of whatever is considered the ship - for lime this meant either jumping off the ledge near the engine intake thing, or jumping out the entrance in the front; for red this meant stepping off the quartz ramp). I got out of red spawn ship approximately 5-10 seconds faster than I got out of lime (depending on which exit was used - the side emergency exits on lime ship are a faster way out). For competition's sake this is a little larger than I'm comfortable with - so I've placed two signs in lime ship to play around with the idea of using warp signs to shorten the walk. (Other touchups are on hold until lime spawn ship is pasted onto the actual map.) I've only really tried this once and it might be worth running more timings, but maybe that is something to keep in mind when placing spawn ships in the map? Otherwise I can try looking into warp signs to skip part of the walk. For easier orientation it would probably be more intuitive to also control the direction that players face when they use the warp, but I don't think that capability currently exists - for now I just have a sign on the wall that players will be facing when they warp telling them that the exit is directly behind them.

Part 2 story segments are now queued up for release on http://unityorigins.tumblr.com. The first one was put up at midnight today (October 12) and segments will be posted every other day at midnight until the last release on October 26. I'd like to take this opportunity to send a shoutout to twilexis for reading through and giving feedback on my initial draft (all...40-ish pages of it apparently O.o). Thanks for your time and input!

Lime spawn ship has now been given the designation SS (UMCS?) Persistence, an Endurance-class retrofit deep space troop transport (I envisioned it to have originally served as a smaller exploration vessel or a transport for a crack team of commandos, but was later modified to carry more crew) built at Eclipse Auxiliary Shipyard and in the service of the UMC Space Command. Two signs with this info have been placed on the ship's bridge. I've changed up some interior decorations, repurposed the sheep room into some bunks, and added the map, subject to modifications pending the construction of the real map (I went off Sir_Didymus's MS Paint diagram on page 1 of this thread). I added a bunch of signs that (hopefully) will make it easier for players to exit the ship, though I'm trying to think of an additional way of doing this that would also not be highly obtrusive to the ship's aesthetics. So far I tried carpeting on the ground but even that looks a bit weird in the corridors. In terms of basic structure there's one more thing I'm thinking of adding (and I would probably be cheating it in >< thinking of using the space behind Engineering on the top deck for an additional social space of some sort), but the rest will depend on what information is needed on the ship, whether SafeBuckets will be in play, whether it is possible to give players flying within a region, etc. - so I consider the project to be "ongoing" in that sense and probably will be until the ship is incorporated into the map.

Greetings, and welcome to both a product and an experiment. It has always amazed me how memories of the Unity lore in rev 11 seem to persist to this day, especially considering that the story was written more or less to just be told over one rev. Since after the story of the Unity Retrieval Project was told in rev 12, I wanted to flesh out the universe a bit more somehow in a text-based format. The end result is a story that explores the time before Unity, and what came before the vessel's construction. The story is being hosted on Tumblr at http://unityorigins.tumblr.com/ Unlike the Unity story in rev 11, this project was not carried out as a staff project and exists entirely within a story serial format. Any resemblances of character or location names to existing Minecraft/PvE counterparts are largely coincidental, though interestingly, because writing did start quite a while ago - P rev 13/4-ish - some of the more deliberate nods may be outdated. The content is aimed more at older audiences relative to the target audience of the rev 11 story (that is, everyone), so beware of that. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the ride. Part 1 of 4 has been lined up for release every other day at midnight Eastern time, starting with tonight and ending October 8.

No issue at all - in fact, after touring UMCS Valkyrie I just realized I could maybe do with an extra room for realism of the ship...somehow. (For example, current setup implies that the ship holds a crew of 12 - might be okay for a crack team of commandos but not for a larger group. Maybe I can reallocate that space for bunks...) But yeah, having sheep on site in the dome will make farm setup much easier than having to pull them from the ship I think. I'll re-purpose the room.

Dang it looks really nice :O. I need to step it up on my end ><. Are the starting sheep going to be in the animal crates inside the domes then? I will have a room to refurbish onboard lime spawn ship (the one with the grass floor on the bottom deck) if that's the case.

Ahh oops, my wool model is outdated >< - the briefing room is on the top deck behind the bridge. It's...a bit far from the exit though. Thinking a warp sign there to get players to the staging room to exit would be a good idea if tests on how much time it takes to exit the ship on spawning show a noticeable difference. Working ship name at the moment is Endurance - open for changes. I'm wondering if it would be cool to showcase both spawn ships before the event actually O.o Exits I am not too sure about - thinking of a way to make it look realistic and work for a lot of players when it's potentially laggy...might be difficult. Got the exit - iron door with tripwire. And yeah I intend to remove the door switch for the event. I'll go do that now actually...

Lime spawn ship is...mostly done at this point I think. I am thinking about adding in emergency exits that open up near the engine intakes (there are signs on the port side that mark approximate location) and maybe some weapons/turrets on the outside, but otherwise any further interior work outside of lighting/wall decorations/signs/closing out extraneous rooms will require additional specifications about what is required to be onboard the ship. The current ship plans I have look something like this: On the upper deck from forward to aft - bridge (extraneous), briefing room, supply closet (extraneous), vertical shafts (some sort of elevator), engineering (extraneous). On the lower deck from forward to aft - staging area (contains exit), corridors and sheep room, the vertical shafts, a melon farm. What I was thinking about when building (and admittedly forgetting how this was done in previous CTFs) was that players would spawn on the upper deck in the briefing room where all information containing the rules, objectives, map, etc. would be stored. Signs would point players toward the vertical shafts (doors to extraneous rooms would be closed for the event), where players would make their way down to the bottom deck, get food or sheep, and then set their spawn in the staging room to allow for easier access to the exit when they respawn. Already I can think of a few weak or deviating points: Any method of setting spawn (that I know of anyway) means that the other team, should they make it so far in, can set their spawn on the other team's ship (might be cool, but there would be little incentive to reset spawn at home ship, which is bad). Scrapping the spawn setting methods in the staging room would require respawned players to traverse the ship again to exit (which I think is unreasonably long and also bad). Humorously, it could be defended as an incentive to not die - but the path out of the ship from the briefing room is still pretty long regardless of how it is explained away. Might be better to simply move initial spawn to the staging area and assume knowledge of the map and objectives are known already...which in previous CTFs has been the case. Information can be time-consuming to read and examine, and time spent reading through it in the beginning of the game is time lost in launching an offensive or mounting a defense, which is disadvantageous to the team. (I do, incidentally, have a switch on the bridge that opens and closes the staging room exit doors, but that was mainly for the realism and for fun aspect of building.) Sheep room is a bit narrow and can hold enough sheep to get started, but is there a way to prevent griefing before the team has a chance to deploy them in a better farm? I added droppers in the melon room (need to add hoppers/chests externally if they are to be used) to act as a quick source of food if the melons in the farms are depleted - my hope is that when the droppers run out of food, a better source of food will have already been built and/or the demand on the melons in the farm is not high enough to keep them constantly empty. Let me know any feedback you have on this. Eadmins and schererererer (who is working on the analogous yellow spawn ship) - I'm open to input about changing up the interior to either make things less OP or balance features on both ships; let me know if there are changes you would like to see. I should be able to make changes with what I have so far; if not I probably have enough to redesign the ship from pieces of the existing model (though hull plating would take time to redraw).

Protip: With the Holiday Punch, hit your Heavy opponent in the back or get a critical hit from the front (or if your opponent has it too, just poke him). As your Heavy victim laughs uncontrollably for a few seconds, line him up in your reticle, press G (or whatever your taunt key is), and watch as he drops dead to the might of your imaginary gun hand.

I think the list of your past bans and notes in your appeal, especially the reason you were banned this time, should speak to the number of chances you have so far been given. Please keep that and the associated warnings given to you in mind - any similar infractions will very likely lead to a heavier penalty, maybe more so than this one has been. Otherwise, the new P map is still very young at about 5 hours old; go enjoy the new revision. You are now unbanned. Welcome back, be considerate, and play well.

I've rechecked my emails and have not seen anything related to your unban at all, save for an email that I received about 2-3 hours ago at time of writing. Maybe the email was sent to the wrong address or it just got lost somewhere? :S Before you are unbanned, I'd like to reiterate the instructions I left you with upon banning: Your forum account is now unbanned - please read through the rules (http://nerd.nu/rules) and post back here stating you will agree to abide by them to continue with the unbanning process for the other Nerd services.

Just so this is more in writing somewhere: I went a little too crazy with mine and made a lot of assumptions that may or may not be in line with Eadmin plans ><. Let me know if things need to be changed around.

Ban information: Ban for theniallmc1 on c.nerd.nu for Minor grief on P nerd.nu/appeal by buzzie71 on 2014-09-20T12:48:12 (no more bans, 2 notes) Relevant note: Note #38173 for TheNiallMc1 on c.nerd.nu: warned for general grief on pve by Zomise on 2014-08-31T12:05:30 You were banned for minor grief of another player's base, some of which are highlighted here: http://i.imgur.com/FFLmUAL.png http://i.imgur.com/b1SMgfb.png The grief was minor, but given that you had been warned for griefing previously, this one led to a ban. More than enough time has elapsed since the ban given what was griefed, so I will unban you now. Be sure to check through the rules at http://nerd.nu/rules before logging back in - keep in mind that removing or destroying blocks placed by someone else without their consent is generally considered foul play (ie, grief), and that you must replant when harvesting another players' farm. Welcome back, be considerate, and play well :D

With regards to land claiming - Zomise, you've brought up really good points about the penalties to towns in the case of an individual who disregards claim borders and builds within or close to them, and there have definitely been quite a few modreqs in this rev alone that highlight that and similar frustrations. Sapphric, Troop, Silver, and I have begun to discuss this and we all agreed pretty quickly that something should be done to, at the very least, make land claims matter more than they do now (or appear to at least). Our goal is to establish a guideline to honor claims within reason (as an extreme case, we would be less likely to honor a 300x300 claim after 3 months if the builder's activity has been confined to a 30x30 area in the corner during that time). The points you bring up about the extent of mayor authority in their own town are also compelling; we're looking into re-examining this too.

For me I don't like the idea of using modreqs completed as a major metric of mod activity or attaching a quota for them (though I would admit that for PvE the proposed average of six modreqs over four weeks sounds rather generous) - they are dependent on some factors that are beyond control of individual moderators: Modreq response time is highly variable and partly dependent on moderator. Mandating mods to handle a certain amount per unit time is reasonable if all mods have a similar response time to modreqs; however, in the past some members of staff have become well known for consistent, extremely quick claiming of new modreqs. Someone who logs in daily for long periods of time and is extremely quick at claiming modreqs would deny other mods the ability to handle them. Historically, a frequent topic of banter in P mod chat is "<X> takes all the modreqs" (the moderator in question has changed over time), and while it is excellent for staff members to be so enthusiastic, I am less eager to see mods penalized for not finishing enough modreqs because someone else got there faster. The number of modreqs depends both on age of the revision as well as its gameplay. The Civcraft rev of S (25?) featured plugins that were designed for self-policing by players, which (at least what I heard) resulted in fewer modreqs. If gameplay ever switches to a mode where less staff assistance is required and there are fewer modreqs overall, either more mods fall below the set average of modreqs completed or the average needs to be revised down to compensate. Likewise, an older revision usually leads to fewer players and fewer modreqs. I think de-emphasizing modreq activity as a measure of staff activity is a good idea; I am more worried about the idea of quantifying it and the possibility of mods who are willing to fill modreqs but don't often run into the chance to handle them being classified as potentially inactive.

Word of warning about that - the topic of distributing portals to developed towns has been brought up before and historically has been a tough problem, mostly due to ensuring fairness and minimizing potential drama.

I think this can be a dangerous idea: From the proposed policy it sounds like the heads are the sole judges of whether a staff member has demonstrated sufficient activity. This would penalize admin groups who do considerably more internal discussion and planning which can be perceived as a lack of activity to anyone on the outside - on the other hand heads (who appear inactive to anyone outside but are clearly active internally) would not suffer from this. This policy potentially gives heads a mandate to remove staff members with little warning once the time is up. I think the second point has been carried out before in the moving of moderators to inactive - which is honestly fair. And so is the rest of the policy, and clarifications, as given here. But I see a potential for abuse and conflict if this policy is not fairly carried out, or perceived to be so, because it does give heads more authority in internal server affairs (by giving them greater ability to remove server admins) - and I think everyone here knows my wariness about that. I will also echo Troop's sentiment about Sapphric and TheRandomnatrix and add that I will not take kindly to any attempts to forcibly eject either of them, or otherwise make it overly difficult for them to return to their roles when they come back.

To be fair, on P there is not even a "process of working with server admins" - if there is a low demand for player-ran events on P it is probably because we currently don't support player-ran events with staff tools and haven't for a very long time. Should that option be opened to them, I am guessing the players there will put forth quite a few proposals.

If this is planned for implementation, I project that P players at least would collectively be up in arms over it. There's going to be a backlash against the tightening of chat rules that is (for me) difficult to justify - we would be imposing restrictions on everyone in order to cater to a subset of the playerbase, and as much as I don't like it, their conception of this subset of the playerbase would probably be more in line with Troop's description (or in other words, "why should I give up my legality to cuss for people who probably aren't here to play nice"). Don't get me wrong, I find the intention behind this proposal to be noble, but I don't think this is the best way to carry it out. I would agree that using a client mod to filter explicit language or disable chat is a more optimal solution. That being said, perhaps a notice somewhere that the chat is M-rated (? I'm going by ESRB ratings :P) would be a good idea - though this is probably more useful for the parents.

Requests for staff assistance in running events has happened before, though very rarely from my point of view - my last query was in May, and someone offered their arena for a server event at least a year or two ago. Most of the time on P, players will just set up their event and announce on the subreddit. Maybe I'm misreading here, but I think that any event proposed to run on PvE should be reviewed and approved by their admins first regardless of how it passes the initial screening. Other than that I'm a little divided, though maybe I'm being a bit traditionalist. One of the cool points of PvE is that any player can host an event given enough hard work and determination - FISA has (had?) a proud tradition of being successful this way, for example, and allowing player-run events with staff assistance might diminish similar efforts? On the other hand, something like this could be a boon for S, whose potentially hostile playstyle is not conducive to running player-hosted events and is a major discouraging factor (I know I've had firsthand experience in this). No qualms with hosting on E though; that could be a cool periodic "community spotlight" feature.

I did that once, because at the time I sought potential staff members who I would work well with as opposed to someone who was then about to step down that I had major problems working with. Depending on how much weight you give your findings with regards to candidate selection, it can be psychologically taxing and has the potential to raise your (our) standards artificially high - I would not recommend doing this unless the need for someone who is close to being that perfect is great enough to justify it.

I think the current gameplay (eg. players who need help, ability to get along with other players) and social (eg. forums, subreddit, and all the discussions on there) environment provide enough opportunities for potential moderators to prove themselves (for example: [redacted] and others); there are quite a few who have shown their suitability for the role through their handling of these situations.

07/03/2015: Few days late, but CobraCorral has been updated to the latest version. Expect to see more information about your horse when you run /hinfo!

Weird direction I thought of without thinking of more concrete details - what about gameplay directions that would encourage players to keep their inventory on them and discourage building of hidden bases? Perhaps allow a virtual inventory space where items inside are guaranteed not to drop on death? One of the gripes mentioned in the past was that players would get upset that their base was xrayed into and then quit (regardless of whether the xrayer was rolled back) - in my time on Chaos-type servers before joining Nerd I can attest to that frustration. On the flipside, it can potentially be a major deterrent to PvP if that is the encouraged playstyle.