Space Station 13 / 14

[huckleton]

Hi I don't play SS13 much these days but the thread remains open for it in case any other users play it and want to talk about it. I primarily play SS14!

What is Space Station 13 and 14

Space Station 13 (and its successor, Space Station 14) is a multiplayer roleplay / job simulation / disaster survival game. It's a little hard to describe! Everything takes place as a round that generally lasts 1-3 hours, though you can join or exit the round at any time in the shift. Almost all servers have some level of roleplay to it, with some servers being on the lower end (more wacky gameplay hijinks) and some being on the higher end (establishing characters and relationships and arcs across many rounds).

The gist is that you are one crew member on board a space station, alongside all the other players in the game, spread across multiple departments. For the most part, your only goals are to do your job and keep the station running. You might be an engineer, a doctor, a chef, a security officer, a scientist... there's a lot of roles you can take up. However, due to ramping events and enemy activity, inevitably the station will become uninhabitable, prompting an evacuation (which ends the round).

SS13 is quite well-known for its mechanical complexity and dynamic systems, but each player is only going to interact with a small slice of these mechanics. For example, say you are an engineer, so your job is to set up an engine to generate power, and fix structural damage to the station when it arises.

• You might need to talk to the Cargo department to acquire materials or extra power generators (like solar panels).
• The Science department can research upgraded tools that you can ask for, or they might call Engineering over the radio to provide them with atmospheric gases.
• Maybe you get attacked while repairing cable networks, and you have to get wheeled over to the Medical department for revival.

It's also open-source, and each server of the game is a self-contained copy of the game's entire code. This means, between different servers, you might play the same game with different mechanics and content. In fact, some people have done crazy total conversion work for SS13/14, turning the game from a space station survival simulator to, among other things: a "marines vs. xenomorphs" team PVP gamemode, a dark fantasy kingdom roleplaying game, an MMO-esque space exploration game where everyone's split into dozens of small crews on little spaceships, and a recreation of Lobotomy Corporation using SS13 mechanics.

Space Station 13 is hosted on the BYOND game engine, and the SS13 server browser is found in the BYOND launcher. It's been going strong since 2003. BYOND is notable for how fucking old and kinda shitty it is (the launcher is NOT malware despite how it looks), but SS13 is also quite iconic and mechanically rich. Mind the learning curve, however.

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Me personally, I started playing Space Station 13 all the way back in 2016, and started playing SS14 mid-last year. I can well and truly describe it as a Major Special Interest of mine. I nolife the shit out of SS14 here check this out.

 

Seriously, I recommend it!! It can sound daunting for people because it's very much a Social Multiplayer game, and it's got a lot of mechanics to it, but a vast majority of the people I've met on these games are happy to teach new players. They're all very much aware that their favorite game is crazy complicated, and the fact most servers are updating nearly daily means they're also in a continuous process of learning more about the game.

Space Station 13's servers are a real mixed bag, but Goonstation was the one I started with and from what it sounds like, they're just as light-hearted, newbie-friendly, and not-bigoted as ever. I used to be an active regular there.

On Space Station 14, most people start with the Wizard's Den servers, the officially-hosted SS14 servers. They very much expect a lot of newbie players coming into the game through them, so they're happy to teach. If you can't get in, or you want something a little more RP-ish / less gameplay-ish, I would recommend the Delta-V servers, which have some fun mechanics like psionics and more species. I've also heard people recommend Funky Station or Goobstation.

I will use this thread to discuss the game and post stories of funny round happenings

[huckleton]

this post edited together from a long explanation i wrote down the other day for some non-ss14 friends who asked

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i played a shorter round a few days ago. (in normal ss14 server terms it'd actually be normal-length but this was only half the round.) the server i play on usually has 3 hour long rounds, as it's a roleplay-focused server with less in-game threats, thus the need to evacuate early is pretty rare. i joined as Casey Gale, a service worker, about 1h30m into the round.

i could talk at length about Casey Gale. they've been my main SS14 character for about a month or so, and i've had them as an OC for longer. all you need to know for now is that the Bit of Casey is that they're like, a pictogram representation of a person inhabiting 3D space. they have some social connections, but for the most part they deliberately try to make themselves a background element of other people's lives. this is also a furry server which makes casey even more inexplicable.

WARNING LONG description of round

this shift was on a map called Tortuga, medium-large map with an "interesting" service department layout. there are three kitchens joined to one central "break room" area for the chef, but each individual kitchen is small and shitty - it does mean, however, a massive surplus of supplies. the hydroponics bay is massive with the most amount of soil / hydroponics trays out of any map we have. there's a massive park area with a stage.

the first part of their shift was pretty standard, filling in for botany in their absence. while the botanist was out trapped in some conversation, casey tended to the plants and fielded requests from the two chefs.

i'm taking a brief detour to also explain one of my favorite species in this server - thaven. 

thaven long explanation

thaven were designed over at the server Impstation, and are often light-heartedly called "space elves" (or spelves). thaven look a bit like humans with Longer features, and have some biology they share with space carp/dragons. their blood is incredibly psychedelic, they do not need oxygen (they can breathe any gas and need to do so to stimulate their biology), they cometimes have gills and tails and scales and other fishy biology. most importantly, however, thaven have a culture of strong principles and virtues, and feel strongly about the moral lessons they keep close to their heart.

the thing is, the unfiltered radiation of space can fuck them up a bit. thaven have brains similar to the positronic brains of a cyborg, which gives the cyborg "laws" that they follow. (think asimov.) however, like cyborgs, thaven are vulnerable to ion storms - just as cyborgs may gain nonsense laws or have their laws corrupted by ion storms, thaven will undergo rapid personality shifts and abrupt changes in principles. passively existing in space in this way has made them kind of loopy in general, which leads to their "moods" mechanic.

thaven are subject to a random selection of "moods" per shift. one is shared across all the thaven, the others are individual to the particular thaven. a shared mood might look like "violence against thaven is permitted without repercussion", "your uniform determines your job", or "today is [certain holiday]". individual moods might look like, "never trust anyone who is smiling", "you must refer to individual people instead of groups of people", "you must pray regularly", or "command should be asked for advice on everything". in addition, ion storms and emagging will cause thaven to develop wildcard moods, which are much more severe and strange. for example: "you are immortal", "you deserve to be shunned", "everyone who obstructs your goals is either a criminal or a demon", "you must lie to people".

due to their cultural focus on strong moral principles, the thaven naming convention is virtue names. which is to say, their names embody some positive quality or moral lesson that the thaven should hold close to their chest. for example, "honesty", "desire", "seek truth", or "be courteous to others". some really funny and out-there names emerge from this.

at some point casey hits up one of their friends, Satan Was An Angel Too, a thaven musician for this shift. she invites them to watch her and a slime-person acquaintance of theirs named Sorrel Biff perform, and they decide to-- actually, no, they pick up a mop and clean up massive blood spills dragging through every major hallway. but anyways, then casey shuffles over to the bar to watch the performance, then sorrel and casey get drinks.

(pictured: casey, satan, sorrel)

 

sorrel leaves after hearing that the atmospheric technician has finished his "torture chamber". casey takes up the now-empty bar in place of the previous bartender who decided to cryo (exit the round) for the night. they serve an engineer and their buddy.

 

eventually satan returns and inexplicably appoints Casey as her voice of reason.

casey and satan have been hanging out a lot more lately, but something casey has been struggling with is feeling like they have been enabling satan's impulsive behavior a little too much lately. on one round casey let satan talk them into giving her around 100u of their own blood, which she used to make drinks that made her deliriously sick. on another round casey attended to some of the chef's botany orders while satan mutated plants into generating gas (though this was a very good thing for the station ultimately). so at this point, casey wants to dial it back a bit and give their own input on things. they ask her to elaborate.

satan tells casey that there's a public-access door that she can't enter, and she wants to break into it. but when she and casey walk to the door in question, it's unbolted. it's a maintenance bar.

casey shuffles inside, but satan immediately asserts herself quite intrusively. she stands on the bar counter and declares she can do whatever she wants, because nobody else is real. the bar owner, Scrawl, gets his manservant bouncer "Guy" to drag her out. they bolt the door to keep her out. casey catches up a bit with one of their other friends, Mera, who happens to be in the maints bar at this same time. 

(pictured: mera, scrawl, guy)

 

they tell her they feel bad leaving Satan out in the cold while everyone's in here, while they debate to themselves if they should leave to keep satan company. at this point, however, everyone in this (crowded) maints bar hears slamming against the bolted airlock. satan is attempting to break in.

casey attempts to reason with her behind the door just as she finally breaks it open.

 

at this point Guy throws her out again, and then chokes her out, but now nothing is stopping her from intruding on the bar. satan thinks scrawl's distaste towards her is related to some feud between her partner and him, a feud that she apparently knows nothing about even though it's been plaguing them for months. everyone is positively bewildered. satan speculates they're exes (a thought that makes scrawl utterly disgusted). then casey shakes her out of it enough to get her to evac on her own.

satan is extremely banned from scrawl's bar. casey's maints bar permission status remains unknown.

apparently, this was satan's list of moods for this shift, which is why she was completely unhinged instead of getting a multitool and remote signaller to undo the door bolts herself like a normal person.

the wacky moods of Satan Was An Angel Too

fun aside note: yesterday casey actually followed up on this whole thing with satan, and they had a good talk about how this was Not okay to put on them and finding ways to navigate satan's moods without encouraging destructive behavior.

what casey doesn't know that in the narrow window of time between this situation and that conversation, satan and her partner had a shift where both of them were so extremely out of it and pissed off that they ended up shooting at scrawl and guy with improvised firearms at a beach party out of a hellish desire for Justice. oops!(?)

[huckleton]

while i wrote that last post for friends, i played a short round as Pennsylvania "Penn" Prescott, a CentComm Official. for context, centcomm is the high command of the company this station works for (nanotrasen); they are played by admins in-character and are capable of bluespace teleporting supplies to the station and dishing out commands that override all other authority.

Penn is a 57 year old thrice-divorced cishet guy and Mallory is a 35-year-old nepotism hire fujoshi dog girl

WARNING ITS ALL BL

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

note: Penn's opinions do not represent my own and he is a bad person on purpose

[huckleton]

greenshift means no events means no threats means i guess you can do whatever.

They built a fucking bar in medbay

 
 
 
 

also someone turned the captain's bloodstream into mold. 

Moldy ass

 
 

[huckleton]

i come with two stories: a story of one of the best shifts casey has ever had, and one of the worst shift casey has ever had. 
 
first of all: date night. there was a server-wide event at a nightclub for "date night", a speed dating event that involved writing about who you are and what you're looking for on a sheet of paper and taking seats at tables with suitors. the events of this round were kind of crude but not like, too salacious really, you could probably show it on an adult swim show.

caseys really good round

casey wrote down on their sheet that they're not looking for anything serious or committed at this time, but they're willing to chat and have a low-stakes nice time. 
 
casey only really tabled once, with an Actual Literal Fucking Demon. at the start of the event casey handed the demon a self-recharging power cell for its translator. they actually met once before; during Satan Was An Angel Too's mad hatter round, it was at the bar looking for a word to rhyme with "precious" and casey volunteered "wretched", to its amusement. their conversation was nice, but not really a date; casey was wondering what the fuck "damnation" meant on the demon's suitor form. they both commisserated over the difficulties of being a very rare species at this company 
 
 
 
after the tabling was over, casey shuffled over to a bar that some acquaintances and strangers were hanging out at. scrawl was there but strangely not his bouncer, a thaven named seeking ruin in seeking purity ("ruin"), a cybernetic human guy named xander whom casey thought was kind of hot, and the human bartender fran whom casey has seen around a few times. a few people coming in and out. there was also a certain human guy named David Ward. 
 
dave is already friends with casey, though not very deeply so at this point. dave's a little weird, a genuine vampire-chaser. he filed his teeth down to be sharp and drinks blood recreationally even though he's not an actual vampire. his morals are really skewed and strange - fine with the idea of killing people as long as it looks cool (though dave has never done it himself). casey thinks the guy is fun to hang with but also finds this amoral shtick of his kind of tacky. this shift, dave also tried and failed to get a date, because he couldn't find any hot guys who were also evil. like dave was going all-in on looking for evil guys. 
 
this shift, however, solidified casey and dave's friendship way more. there's one thing they can agree on wholeheartedly - the guys at this bar are hot. they legit got to queen out watching a hot guy pole dance in a bunny suit. it was such an incredible bonding experience for them. 
 
also later casey pays dave $80 for mustering the courage to take his shirt off and get on the pole himself 
 
 
 
then a friend of dave's (and fran's and ruin's and xander's) walks in, a guy named buddy. sweating from head to to, anxious, dateless. buddy is genuinely attractive to a certain kind of person but his lack of confidence is so strong it's a dealbreaker for a lot of people. the people at this bar rally together to help up buddy's confidence and sex appeal so he can get a date. 
 
dave, who is not very good at thinking through the consequences of his actions, seizes this opportunity to attempt to turn buddy evil. 
 
 
 
 
this horribly, horribly backfires as buddy's other wingmen, including casey, try to help buddy become as much of a dreamboat for dave as possible, because if buddy and dave can get together that technically counts as getting him a date. and dave realizes way too late and gets very, very, very scared. casey was REALLY not helping here. they kept egging buddy on to "Platonically" hit dave and everyone else was helping to make the whole thing incredibly unhinged. they described it as buddy morphing into a hot guy to dave in the same way a hungry person sees their friend turn into a giant steak in a cartoon 
 
eventually people started filtering out of the bar and club, leaving just casey and scrawl. casey takes the opportunity to apologize to scrawl for not being able to keep satan under control during the mad hatter incident, which scrawl forgives simply because casey had the mind to apologize in the first place. their conversation is cut short by new faces coming in. 
 
casey takes a break to return to the station and grab food, and they have a nice conversation with dave where they chat about gay bar culture and how they feel about dating and attraction. they also stumble into a certain Roy Alvarez (human guy, satan's partner), a friend of both of theirs. roy is apparently on work probation after an "episode" - deftly avoiding telling casey what actually happened. they express their sympathies. 
 
evac arrives and fran escorts david to evac by picking him up, which they call "dave escort services" 
 
 
 
 
What the...  

the latter was weirdly blood-themed. this is not even the first time they had a weirdly blood-themed round, but the first was kind of fun albeit weird for them. this was just abysmal 
 

caseys utterly god awful round

• casey showed up in their date night outfit, and began chatting up skye (7-foot-tall moth person that casey has a crush on) at the bar

• looker (a shadowkin, kinda. more like a shapeshifting alien pretending to be a shadowkin) runs into the bar asking skye for romantic advice; skye brings casey with them to the boxing ring to show looker how to Take Charge

• casey was having a great time watching skye and looker do "Romance Coaching" (read: skye was throwing and body slamming looker) until the courier rolled in and threw a fragile envelope at casey. it instantly exploded into a massive pool of blood, completely drenching casey right in front of skye and looker, in the nice outfit they wore to date night

• skye and looker finish their deal and skye tells casey he's too tired to hang out and do cute stuff; he cryos. despite being covered in blood, skye still finds them cute - the only silver lining for the rest of the entire shift

• casey, somehow still holding it together after this big of an ego wound, talks to and trades with dave for a non-blood soaked jacket

• they take a shower and head straight back to the bar to order slightly-stronger-than-their-usual alcohol and bitch to the bartender (parsons, arachnid) about the situation

• someone orders a blood drink from the bar, which parsons lacks the material for; casey, who just happens to have a syringe and beverage jug on them for unrelated reasons, volunteers their own

• looker then also runs in and SPECIFICALLY asks casey if he can drink their blood. they say yes, begrudgingly, under the condition that he does not actually put his mouth on them, and extracts more of their blood for this purpose

• they try to hand looker a glass of it but it ends up shattering. looker, offended, retaliates by grappling casey and throwing them (something they learned from skye earlier)

• this spills the jug of blood in their hand, covering them in blood AGAIN, which makes them actually genuinely pissed off

logs of this incident

 
 
 
 
 
 
  

 

• they step outside to take a breather (and have a brief funny with addie fizz, a slime person who is <5 feet tall and kind of insane) before they finally step back into the bar and order even stronger alcohol
• they toss a skimmer discus with a sucker born every minute (thaven) for a bit before realizing sucker was the courier that threw the blood envelope at them in front of the guy they have a crush on
• in an uncharacteristic moment of "i'm gonna do something about this instead of grinning and bearing it and minding my own business" casey chugs the rest of their drink and tries to confront sucker to demand an apology. they get blown off
• casey vents to dave a little bit but decides not to pursue the issue, because evac just arrived
• dave arrives at evac and offers casey a sympathetic ear, before sucker shows up and pressures dave into huffing frezon (extremely psychedelic gas), thus killing any chance of conversation between dave and casey

casey really did come close to violence. i need you to imagine them walking out of all this with full-body muscle pain from how much self-restraint they had to exert. they had to hold onto "skye still thinks im cute" like a lifeline to not start swinging

[huckleton]

one of casey's in-character friends roy had a legendary shift as the logistics officer (head of the logistics department). for context, on average logi makes around ~100k spesos per shift, with 200k being a "really good logi shift". well, roy and his team were so on the ball they managed to make about 600k through mining and bounties. they bought a shuttle with a bar attached (the barge) and then he started spending his leftover money on gambling crates. then he also won the jackpot. 1 million speso winning from a gambling crate. he ended the round with something like 1.5 million spesos.

this is just one thing that happened this round. some other things that happened: a living gingerbread man showed up and became a barber. the Hierophant, a magical weapon that acts as a boss, killed a salvager and then promptly broke out of its containment. the tesla almost loosed. roy's partner and a cargo tech this shift, Satan Was An Angel Too, caught a glimpse of "smile dog", a cryptid in the form of a "dog-shaped smiling yellow toy" (a smiley guy) that has been haunting her and roy for a moment.

approximately two hours into the shift, roy requisitions CentComm for a shipyard console to purchase a new shuttle for the logistics department using their hard-earned cash. CC approves this request.

Request for Shipyard Console

 

the CentComm Official on call this shift is a certain Pennsylvania Prescott - you may know him because i play him and also mentioned him another post. against protocol, Penn starts yammering over the CentComm radio, which is only heard by the dignitaries Blueshield Officer 'Shepherd' (BSO) and the Nanotrasen Representative (NT Rep) Clover. he sarcastically states, "i heard your LO has a new toy to play with this shift."

logistics purchases the Barge, a large salvage shuttle with a bar built into it. instead of doing anything productive, roy pilots it to run circles around the station. penn gets audibly more frustrated that he is unable to fly to the station to see the barge. however, with plenty of money left over, roy starts spending it on gambling crates and, by insane sheer luck, wins the jackpot of 1 million spesos.

I just won the juckport

  
  

penn is so angry and jealous of being unable to gamble and see the Barge, he holes himself up in the CC fax office and gets very drunk, ignoring the requests of the station dignitaries. but not before leaving them with a little "reward"; the BSO "wishes they had more toys to play with" on the station, and penn bluespaces them his personal CentComm-branded smiley guy.

things let a little weirder, however, as Roy witnesses this smiley guy blinking in his hands, twice with fifteen minutes in between. roy gets sick of being toyed with and takes the smiley guy to his office, clears the desk, and starts grilling the smiley guy to speak. it responds with a vague omen of doom.

WHATS YOUR FUCKING ANGLE BUD

roy, terrified for his life, calls the captain to his office to discuss disposing of the smiley guy. they agree to throw it into space, despite it being personal property of a CC official.

roy attempts to throw the smiley guy off the salvage dock, but not before it speaks again. instead roy throws it on the ground and invokes jesus. it disappears in a blue flash of light which roy interprets as irrefutable proof in the existence of jesus.

on the way back to centcomm, roy puts an end to a feud between himself and the chief engineer that has lasted all shift by accidentally causing a fistfight on the evac shuttle (unleashing his friends to punch the shit out of the CE. he promptly gets told off by higher powers that warn him that his job is at stake.) the moment he steps onto CC, he is called directly to the fax office over the radio.

at centcomm, the crew returns to the sight of the fax office being completely dark, covered in curtains, littered with booze and glass and unspent bullet casings, and the singular centcomm official (penn) wasted and lying on the ground underneath the desk, playing fleetwood mac through a super synthesizer.

 

the dignitaries enter this office and tell penn to sit down and not talk to anyone, because he is WAY TOO DRUNK to be presentable right now. but penn insistently calls roy to the office and stumbles towards him to hand him a medal that says "GREAT JOB" (too drunk to write anything else). penn yells in their face for them to take it

i couldn't come up with a good way to work this image into the post, so i am ending it off with this announcement by captain Mist Sabre