To people who are looking to play that have never played before:
I give you the most relevant resource for your needs:
The /tg/ wiki
Because Kiwistation is a fork of tg code,
most but not all of this information will be at least partially accurate. Depending on the date of the fork, some things on the wiki might just be completely wrong. In that case, either look for old versions of the page or figure it out for yourself.
I would highly recommend the
New Player Guide as it will be relevant to the current codebase.
What should you do as a new player? Simple: learn a job and do that job. How do you learn a job? Read the wiki page then spend a decent amount of time fucking it up before it clicks in your brain. Don't worry, it's okay to fuck up in SS13 because arguably that's where most of the fun comes from.
Don't be afraid to ask for help in OOC, but generally try to avoid putting meta info in OOC. I'm not sure how much of a fuck Null gives on the rules like metagaming or whatnot, but generally try to avoid it as it can make the game kind of boring or fuck up someone else's fun. If you can, ask people around you for help or ask on the general or department radios for how to do things you're not sure of.
Here's some bullet points to get you started:
- Press Tab to switch to hotkey mode, which allows WASD movement (see the hotkeys here)
- In hotkey mode, pressing T to talk and using a semicolon ; before your text will allow you to talk over the general radio
- To speak over your department radio, use a period and then the letter your department is assigned. For example, .s would be security. A list of radio channels can be seen here.
- Remember to change your intent based on what you want to do with something. Using "Harm" intent will generally smash the thing you click on with the item in your hand. Using "Help" intent will generally not be harmful action, but sometimes you might clobber someone by accident. Apologizing usually works.
- You can hold things in either hand. Switch your active hand by pushing the hotkey (X) or clicking your empty hand
- You need oxygen to breathe in rooms without it. You need a suit to survive the pressure damage in space. You can usually change out and refill your oxygen tanks. Be careful to not use nitrogen, plasma or any other gas to breathe from. This is a common mistake, and a common strategy to kill someone you don't like.
- Spend a decent amount of time either experimenting or reading the wiki. It's good to be curious in SS13, as a bunch of complex interactions are simulated. The game will surprise you with how ridiculous it can be.
For an example to those who have only heard of the game and are interested in playing, SS13 discards graphics for complex item and mechanical interactions. It's the closest thing you could reasonably get to a multiplayer dwarf fortress adventure mode.
This is the kind of game where, if you spend your round being a good R&D tech, you could convince a security officer to give you his stun baton to "upgrade it." You can then dismantle the baton, remove the battery, replace the battery's internal fluid with concentrated plasma and put it back together. The next time that security officer turns his baton on, it will violently explode in his hands. Whether you planned for what to do after the entire department comes crashing through your door is down to you.
The game is a lot of fun for both the sheer magnitude of stupid shit that can happen (everyone getting swallowed by a black hole, summoning an elder god to destroy the station, changelings, wizards, the chef poisoning everyone with vomit pills, etc) and it's definitely worth a look. There's a lot to learn, the game is hugely autistic by nature but it's an experience unlike any you'll ever have. All the hours of walking out of airlocks or blowing yourself up like a retard, blowing up because someone else is a retard, dying for a reason you can't explain. It's all worth it when it clicks.
Good luck, try not to kill yourself. Keep a toolbox handy and a table nearby if you want to fuck someone's entire life up.
