Tips and advice

These pieces of advice aren't hard-and-fast Rules, but are good advice that people generally follow.

General Advice

• Everyone fucks up sooner or later--admins included. Relax. We're all human beings and the community is very forgiving of mistakes because God help us if we weren't. No one is going to hold a grudge over it forever (and if they do anyway, that's kind of sad and their time in the community will be short and painful anyway as everyone starts to hate them). Whether it's an OOC rule or an IC mistake that gets you into trouble, just try to learn from what went wrong and you'll be a better roleplayer for it! If whatever you did was so bad that you got yourself banned, just submit an appeal owing up to your mistake, or at least asking why if you seriously don't understand or agree with the ban.
• Admins screw up too. We won't know unless you tell us. Again, we're human. I strongly encourage players to contact admins in private and confront those you think are doing wrong or could do better. We can't promise we can please everyone, but that doesn't mean we won't try! You'll never be banned for complaining to us in private. Contact Ace on the forums if you have any constructive criticism for admins--including himself. We want to hear your feedback!
• The "No antagonist behavior without being set as antag" rules don't often count whenever vore is your goal. That doesn't mean you're allowed to explode a hole in the station, but it DOES mean we don't care if you hack a few doors or break some laws to go ambush someone in their workplace and turn them into bellyfodder. In fact, we encourage it, as long as you can be sneaky and clever about it. If an admin asks OOCly, just tell them your intentions and you'll be fine. If you're really worried, you can give us a PM heads up before doing it.
• If you're going to play a sketchy non-antag character who likes to break the rules, but don't want to get in trouble for griefing, here's some ways to make it fun for everyone: One, inform an admin of your character, and what sort of things they'll want to do. Give them a theme. Give them a motive. Give them a pattern. Once an admin okays it, you don't have to inform us of every little thing you do, but we just want to know you'll be doing stuff. Two, INCLUDE SECURITY RECORDS ON THE CHARACTER! I doubt it's the first time they've been in trouble, so write some security records. If anyone in security is smart enough to actually read the damn security files, they could be tipped off to keep an eye on you, thus making it interesting for everyone! Three, avoid crimes that would get you executed or permanently brigged--which would basically mean your character gets permakilled. Not only does this tick you off, but it ticks other players off since those crimes are extreme and cross the line I'm trying to show you here. A good example of a well done criminal character could be a scientist attempting to produce and smuggle technology off-station to sell on the black market, or a quartermaster who uses supply points to buy illegal contraband crates, or my personal favorite, a crooked cop who uses BS reasons to arrest people and brig them in their stomach! :3 Playing criminal characters has to be done right, but when it is, it makes security's job loads more fun.
• If you join as an assistant, get a real job sooner or later or we'll give you one. You might not like the job we assign you. The game is more fun with a real job. If you complain about being bored and you're an assistant after being on station for several days, no one is going to take you seriously.
• If you find a clown costume, clown around at your own risk, or you know what might happen. You have been warned.
• If you spawn as a mouse (not a micro RPing as a mouse-anthro... an actual mouse), be warned that people are prone to kill you, ESPECIALLY if you're out in the open, making no effort to hide, and/or dicking around anywhere that food is served. Provided, if you're not playing as a mouse, don't be a dick to people who are actually roleplaying as one, and not just being annoying little pests.
• If you're playing any head of staff, try to avoid getting eaten so easily. Or if you do, make sure your ID ends up somewhere safe. For instance, if you get eaten as the Chief Engineer, it helps to get the ID card to someone who knows how to eject the core.
• If you want to steal access to the station without pissing off admins, go eat someone with that access! Give them a good long gurgling (unless they OOCly dislike digestion). Make sure you don't forget to remove their ID and headsets or you'll digest your prize! It should go without saying that the person has to be online who you go after, and you have to RP with them. Eating offline players or without RP is forbidden.
• If you find your character involved in a heated argument, or even a fight, it's good to let your adversary know in local or global OOC that it's your character, and not you, the player, who is pissed off. I for one love a little drama once in a while to spice things up. Keeps the RP interesting. People come to this server for the vore but stay for the story (and more vore). My favorite scenes are always those most filled with conflict and tension. But sometimes people forget the difference between IC and OOC and need a little reminder that it's all just in good fun. This policy is very good to follow, as it has diffused or avoided countless moments of OOC anger between players.
• If you're upset, calmly, and civilly, say something about it. Keep the conflict localized though. That means don't broadcast it in global OOC or on the chatroom or you'll be in violation of rules rather than just these policies. 19/20 times, you guys do an impressively good job at coming to an understanding. For the 1 other time, you can always contact an admin.
• Steer away from playing as hardened military veteran characters. These characters are almost always done badly and we will probably mock you behind your back. If you're gonna be ex-military, you're better off being a grunt or no one important. Ask yourself, "Why would my character seek employment on a station like this?" If they're that much of a badass, they'd probably work for the Emergency Response Team or the Nanotrasen Navy instead. They don't belong in the crew. This also applies to politician characters or high ranking businessfolk. Unless they hit rock bottom, they'd probably get better pay and less work in Central Command.
• In addition to above, remember that IC and OOC are separate. Just because you hate someone ICly doesn't mean you should hate them OOCly. Keep IC and OOC separate and you'll stay generally friendly with everyone.
• Although unwilling vore is be a crime, falling under rape, manslaughter, or murder under space law, players should be lenient toward punishment in vore-related crimes. For example, if your sentence is, say, 30 minutes for eating a crew member, your sentence is 30 minutes... in character. If you don't want to get off your computer and take a 30 minute break while waiting for your sentence to expire, OOCly ask the security arresting you if they would permit a "Time skip." As in, pretend you served the full 30 minutes when in real-time you only served, like, 5 minutes.
• Playing security? You're equipped with a mobile brig! Your stomach and anywhere else you can stuff criminal scum. Use it!
• Try to limit use of the Global OOC channel. It gets spammy. If I am forced to mute it, I forget to unmute it and it disables local OOC too. Use Local OOC if you need to type OOC, or type (( in brackets )) through your PDA's messenger if you need to talk OOC over distance. Don't talk about off-topic nonsense in game. We have a Skype group for that.
• Joined as the wrong job and no HoP is online? Going offline and not just AFK? Use cryosleep to free up your job slot. Go to the crew dorms. Between the bedrooms and the indoor pool, there are pods with green beds. These are cryosleep pods. Climb in and disconnect (or ghost if you intend to respawn). Make sure you don't leave your ID inside your PDA or the pod will spit out your ID card for anyone to pillage. (It's against the rules to take an AFK/Offline player's ID anyway, but best not give them the chance to begin with.)
• Power is out? No engineers online? Rather than hacking all the doors or disconnecting until someone else fixes it (which they probably won't unless they play engineers), just cryosleep and rejoin as an engineer to get the power up and running. Or bug the Skype group, or, ask an online admin to power the SMESes to make it happen faster. You should still set the solar arrays as an engineer though or they will wear out eventually.
• Don't like someone? Don't like something? Don't take it into your own hands. That always backfires. Talk to an admin. Directly. Not through a friend who's a friend of an admin. Directly. I cannot stress this enough. We're not hard to contact. You're not bothering us. It's our job.
• If you find yourself arguing with an admin for more than a few minutes and it isn't going your way, give up. You won't win. If you still think it's unfair, seek another admin's council. Even if it's Ace, the top admin, if you explain your case to another admin who thinks he was in the wrong, he's more liable to listen because now you have someone else supporting your case. Although if you find that second opinion still isn't the one you agree with, you're probably actually in the wrong. Cut your losses and we'll all get over it.
• You'll never be punished for constructively criticizing the rules or admin policies. Just keep in mind what that means. If you're calling one of the admins a faggot or some other blatant insult, we'll probably ban you and it doesn't help us fix anything anyway. But if you're just saying, "I don't like this admin because of how they handled this incident" then that is something we're more willing to listen to you.
• Above all, be forgiving. Everyone, even admins, have their bad days. We fuck up sometimes. We're here to have fun! Let bygones be bygones. Else we're just a bunch of horny furries and voraphiles crying over a badly coded Byond game.

F.A.Q.

Q: How do I vore people?

A: You should read the Vore page. Grab your target (roleplaying it out, of course) with the "Grab Intent" in-game. Then upgrade your grip to aggressive. Then click on whoever is eating! Be it yourself, someone else, or if you click on the person you're grabbing you'll crawl into their maw!

Q: WHY IS THE SERVER LAGGING?

A: It isn't. I'm serious. It isn't. 99% of the time, any lag reported is on your end and not the server's. We have a stupidly powerful bandwidth and reliable connection. You can type '.ping' to measure the response time between you and the server, and compare it to other players. If it IS the server and you all have awful response times, then it's probably going to go away shortly.

Q: WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF IN THE FACE WITH A BAG OF CHEESE PUFFS?!

A: Set your intent to help. Also read the "new player" guide ya silly clod.

Q: Do I really need Skype?

A: If you want some way to contact the admins, it's strongly advised. Otherwise we can't help you if we're not online.

Q: Is there any voice chatting?

A: No. Not in game.

Q: I found a guy passed out because they disconnected. What do I do?

A: If they aren't coming back, drag them to the cryosleep beds in the dorms and use grab intent to stuff them in. This will eventually delete the character and free their job slot. Give them at least 10 minutes if they disconnected without warning.

Q: Can I have the vore code?

A: Due to watching several vore station servers come up and then go down in flames due to in-fighting that nearly got so bad it almost made Aryion.com's mods shut us down even though we're not affiliated with them, just due to the amount of chaos apparently started by other servers with abusive admins, I've decided not to release the code until I have my own forum to use in case that happens again so the whole project doesn't die because of a few bad apples. Sorry. The license agreement of Baystation's code does not require me to share my code edits, only allow you to play the server. When I overhaul the code and bring it up to date, that will change, but by then we'll have our own forum hopefully.

Q: Can I have a custom item?

A: Only if you can make the sprite for it, and code if necessary. Ask me for custom items. If I allow your request, I'll give you the resources needed to make it.

Q: How do I reform? / Is there reforming allowed?

A: The short answer: Yes. The long answer: ICly, because "magic" in this world must be explainable scientifically and magic reforming is thus not allowed, we instead have resleeving. There are currently no restrictions on what you can and cannot remember about your past life / death, but don't abuse it for revenge killings, calling out preds to sec, etc. The way I play it is if I die, I forget everything up to the moment I was last cloned. If I wasn't cloned during that shift, I respawn OOCly and ICly play it off as being cloned "planetside" at CentComm. If I get cloned with my deceased body that someone discovered and dragged back to medbay on the station, and another player clones and resurrects me, then I remember dying. I recommend you also play by these rules. The only time this rule is overridden is if an admin enforces a Permanent Killing as in-character punishment for capital crimes. See Space Law for details.

Q: Space law says murder is a capital crime! What if I get caught eating someone?

A: In-character, it's still illegal. But out of character, players generally agree to be lenient toward vore related crimes. Furthermore, you will never be permakilled by an admin's orders or permanently thrown in jail for a vore crime. I just won't allow it. We'll use OOC loopholes like pretending your 5 minute jail sentence was 2 hours like Space Law says it should be.

Q: How can I donate?

A: You can donate here through Paypal. Paypal account not required if you have a credit/debit card.

Q: Do the admins hate me? :(

A: Probably not.

Q: I got underage banned, but I'm not underaged! I was born in blah blah blah...

A: Giving a date of birth doesn't mean a thing. To appeal an underaged ban, you must include a photo of yourself, your username held up on a piece of paper in the photo, words on that paper saying, "I was underage banned from VORE Station", AND some form of photo ID in the photo. We're not asking for anything official. A school ID is fine. Worried about us stealing your info? Blot out your address, your license number, anything sensitive. We just want an ID with your photo on it that we know only someone of age could possess. Failing to follow these directions may result in us reporting your username to Eka's moderators as well. So, if you are actually underaged, you're better off just keeping your mouth shut about it and accepting your ban. Don't waste our time. Considering no one has successfully followed these directions so far, we don't think we've ever underage banned a properly aged player yet.