Overboard Index

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>>12
>open ended sandbox 
I commend your optimism but I don't think that'll work out very well. As we've seen with Lifeweb and to a lesser extent with /vg/ itself, people don't really like the social part of the social sandbox that is SS13. It's used as a vehicle for comedy at best and only as a way to spew the same dated memes (e.g. Sterlok and all the people with the same-ish gimmick) at worst. 
Which is, I guess it's fine, honestly. I'm just sort of tired of more of the same, and longing for the times when the game could provide a whole range of emotions, when improv wasn't the end-all be-all. I think I already see /vg/ as this open-ended sandbox, but most people just don't want to explore the possibilities of that, or are too burnt-out after playing for >10 years to really care. 

>where things can develop more chaotically and spiral out of control more readily
In my experience, "chaos" has become sort of a buzzword. New servers pride themselves on being more chaotic than the last ones but never really question why they want that. To promote emergent gameplay? To introduce more fun interactions? To stay true to traditions of times long gone? I don't think that just making the game more chaotic accomplishes any of that. I guess it does bring a little more action, though. But you have to be careful not to go overboard with that stuff.
Beside

>>14
>and longing for the times when the game could provide a whole range of emotions
This is what I'd like to see fstation facilitate too. More open ended instead of trying just to get jecties and reroll antag again. A deep level of roleplaying is something that would be nice. How to encourage it code wise is one matter (reduce gamey/arcade-mode features), but the other matter is also encouraging it among the playerbase too. If people feel rage or attraction or sadness in the game, then I think that's the right path for us.
You might be right about avoiding chaos for the sake of chaos. I do like the idea of the station being a death trap where you have to keep your wits about you though.
I guess I want to reduce noisy/gunk style random events so the station feels more chill and like it could keep running without issues under normal conditions, but also reduce safety padding so that once things get dangerous, you really have to be careful and there's not that much room for forgiveness.

>>42
This is an overwhelmingly excellent reply, honestly. A little hard to come up with a response to something this concise and on-point, but I'll try. 

>the other matter is also encouraging it among the playerbase too
Right now I see two factors that could stand in the way of that, with the first being the state of /vg/ (since that's where the server mainly gets its audience from), and the second being (at least partly) me. I'll elaborate on that in a bit. 

The first one is, I think, glaringly obvious: /vg/ just doesn't endorse or sometimes even enforce roleplay at all, and often it feels like the server does quite the opposite. Any character idea that isn't a throwaway gag or a silly little gimmick gets either completely disregarded or outright ridiculed [to be fair, the latter was more of a concern when thread was actually alive and people were discussing the game on there]. There definitely are exceptions to this, though. Still, not a great starting point. Then you have to take into account that people who will want to migrate will generally dislike something about the state that /vg/ is currently in. That's mostly banned people and other faux revolutionaries. It's nigh impossible to make someone leave the server they like already, no matter how much you promise, especially if you underdeliver on that. 
I don't think there's a solution to this issue right now, not one that keeps the imageboard audience focus. I'll consider maybe talking to people I know from some other boards to see if they'd be interested in something like that, but not only is that not a permanent solution, it's one that's highly likely to fail. 

As to the second one... You have probably noticed by now that I'm an ESL. No two ways about it, and I'm the worst kind of, since I'm also Russian - which is why I'm this verbose... I'm a refugee, yes; my first codebase was /vg/ when it was hosted on the long gone Soviet Station, which is why I'm so nostalgic about it (and also the fact that it's the only one that hasn't made the game entirely unplayable yet), but more relevant to the topic is the fact that even if I'm (barely) able to hold a basic conversation on an imageboard, I completely fold when presented with a complex developing situation, and the only response I can give is to just stand there and bat my eyes like an idiot. So, I myself am just not fit for the kind of space I proselytise. This wouldn't be noticeable at all if the server had more people, really - right now every player counts and has to do something to make the rounds more memorable, though. 

>I do like the idea of the station being a death trap where you have to keep your wits about you though.
Hard agree on this one. I really didn't understand the point of removing shelters until I saw the effects of that in action. I still think there's some utility to keeping them in, because having a plasma flood be a guaranteed way to instantly depop an entire server is fun maybe once or twice at most and gets stale after that, but we don't have people actually antagonising the station right now anyway so who cares.

>I guess I want to reduce noisy/gunk style random events 

>>45
are you violentfire?

>>254
I don't know who that is.

is it kino?

>>75 (OP) 
Maybe make it a toggleable settings option?

>>110
On a per-pkayer preferences basis? Right now it's configurable but applies to everyone or noone.

>>113
Yeah, like that, as an opt-out system.