tips.txt

Space map levels' connections are randomized between rounds, but are otherwise kept consistent in the same round.
You can catch thrown items by toggling on your throw mode with an empty hand active.
To crack the safe in the vault, use a stethoscope or thermal drill.
You can climb onto a table by dragging yourself onto one. This takes some time. Clicking on a table that someone else is climbing onto will knock them down.
You can drag other players onto yourself to open the strip menu, letting you remove their equipment or force them to wear something. Note that exosuits or helmets will block your access to the clothing beneath them, and that certain items take longer to strip or put on than others.
Clicking on a windoor rather than bumping into it will keep it open. You can click it again to close it.
You can spray a fire extinguisher, throw items, or fire a gun while floating through space to change your direction. Simply fire in the opposite direction of where you want to go.
You can change the control scheme by pressing tab. One uses WASD for movement, while the other uses the arrow keys. Keep in mind that hotkeys are also changed with this.
Firesuits and winter coats offer mild protection from the cold, allowing you to spend longer periods of time near breaches and space than if wearing nothing at all.
Glass shards can be welded to make glass, and metal rods can be welded to make metal. Ores can be welded too, but this takes a lot of fuel.
If you need to drag multiple people either to safety or to space, bring a locker over and stuff them all in before hauling them off.
You can grab someone by clicking on them with the grab intent, then upgrade the grab by clicking on the grab itself. An aggressive grab will allow you to place them on a table by clicking on it, or throw them by toggling on throwing.
Holding alt and left clicking a tile will allow you to see its contents in the top right window panel, which is much faster than right clicking.
The resist button will allow you to resist out of handcuffs, being buckled to a chair or bed, out of locked lockers and more. Whenever you're stuck, try resisting!
You can move an item out of the way by dragging it and then clicking on an adjacent tile with an empty hand.
You can recolor certain items like jumpsuits and gloves in washing machines by also throwing in a crayon.
Maintenance is full of equipment that is randomized every round. Look around and see if anything is worth using.
Some roles cannot be antagonists by default, but antag selection is decided first. For instance, you can set Security Officer to High without affecting your chances of becoming an antag -- the game will just select a different role.
There are many places around the station to hide contraband. A few for starters: linen boxes, toilet cisterns, body bags. Experiment to find more!
When in doubt about technicial issues, clear your cache (byond launcher > cogwheel > preferences > game prefs), update your BYOND, and relog.
Most things have special interactions with your middle mouse button, alt, shift, and control click. Experiment!
If you find yourself in a fistfight with another player, running away and calling for help is a perfectly viable option.
Different weapons have different strengths. Some weapons, such as spears, floor tiles, and throwing stars, deal more damage when thrown compared to when attacked normally.
Clicking on a tile on harm intent with a glass of water can make a slippery tile, allowing you to slow down your pursuers in a pinch.
When dealing with security, you can often get your sentence negated entirely through cooperation and deception.
We were all new once, be patient and guide new players in the right direction.
On most clothing items that go in the exosuit slot, you can put certain small items into your suit storage, such as a spraycan, your emergency oxygen tank, or a flashlight.
Most job-related exosuit clothing can fit job-related items into it. For example, the atmospheric technician's hardsuit/winter coat can hold an RPD, and labcoats can hold most medicine.
If there's something you need from another department, try asking! This game isn't singleplayer and you'd be surprised what you can get accomplished together!
You'll quickly lose your interest in the game if you play to win and kill. If you find yourself doing this, take a step back and talk to people - it's a much better experience!
Don't be afraid to ask for help, whether from your peers or from mentors.
As the Captain, you are one of the highest priority targets on the station. Everything from nuclear operatives to traitors that need to rob you of your unique lasergun or your life are things to worry about.
As the Captain, always take the nuclear disk and pinpointer with you every shift. It's a good idea to give one of these to another head or Blueshield you can trust with keeping it safe.
As the Captain, you have absolute access and control over the station, but this does not mean that being a horrible person won't result in mutiny and a ban.
As the Chief Medical Officer, your hypospray is like a refillable instant injection syringe that can hold 30 units and the unlike standard hypospray, yours is able to be filled with harmful reagents and injects without telling anyone what have you exactly injected the person with.
As the Chief Medical Officer, coordinate and communicate with your doctors, chemists, and geneticists during a nuclear emergency, blob infestation, or some other crisis to keep people alive and fighting.
As a Medical Doctor, you can surgically implant or extract things from people's chests. This can range from putting in a bomb to pulling out an alien larva.
As a Medical Doctor, you must target the correct limb and be on help intent when trying to perform surgery on someone.
As a Medical Doctor, corpses with the "...and their soul has departed" description no longer have a ghost attached to them and aren't revivable or clonable right now, but they might be clonable later.
As a Medical Doctor, treating plasmamen is not impossible! Salbutamol stops them from suffocating and showers stop them from burning alive. You can even perform surgery on them by doing the procedure on a roller bed under a shower.
As a Chemist, there are dozens of chemicals that can heal, and even more that can cause harm. Experiment!
As a Chemist, some chemicals can only be synthesized by heating up the contents with a chemical heater or manually with lighters and similar tools.
As a Chemist, you will be expected to supply crew with certain chemicals. For example, cryoxadone and mannitol for the cryo tubes, unstable mutagen and saltpetre for botany as well as healing pills and patches for the front desk.
As a Chemist, Water and Potassium mixed together will create an explosion, with power scaling by amount used. Don't do it.
As a Geneticist, you can eject someone from cloning early by disabling power in genetics. Note that they will suffer more genetic damage and may lose vital organs from this.
As a Geneticist, becoming a hulk makes you capable of dealing high melee damage, stunlocking people, and punching through walls. However, you can't fire guns, will lose your hulk status if you go into critical condition. Being hulk also does not allow you to break any server rules and go berserk as non-antagonist.
As the Virologist, your viruses can range from healing powers so great that you can heal out of critical status, to diseases so dangerous they can kill the entire crew with airborne spontaneous combustion. Experiment!
As the Research Director, you can take AIs out of their cores by loading them into an intelliCard, which lets you see their laws, even ion/syndicate ones. It can then be placed into an AI system integrity restorer computer to revive and/or repair them.
As the Research Director, you can lock down cyborgs instead of blowing them up. Then you can have their laws reset or if that doesn't work, safely dismantled.
As the Research Director, you can spy on and even forge PDA communications with the message monitor console! The key is in your office.
As a Scientist, you can maximize the number of uses you get out of a slime by feeding it slime steroid, created from purple slimes, while alive. You can then apply extract enhancer, created from cerulean slimes, on each extract.
As a Scientist, you can disable anomalies by scanning them with an analyzer, then send a signal on the frequency it gives you with a remote signaling device. This will leave behind an anomaly core, which can be used to construct a Phazon mech!
As a Scientist, researchable stock parts can seriously improve the efficiency and speed of machines around the station. In some cases, it can even unlock new functions.
As a Roboticist, keep an ear out for anomaly announcements. If you get your hands on an anomaly core, you can build a Phazon mech!
As a Roboticist, you can repair your cyborgs with a welding tool. If they have taken burn damage, you can remove their battery, expose the wiring with a screwdriver and replace their wires with a cable coil.
As a Roboticist, you can reset a cyborg's module by cutting and mending the reset wire with a wire cutter or using a cyborg reset module.
As a Roboticist, you can augment people with cyborg limbs. Augmented limbs can easily be repaired with cables and welders.
As the AI, you can click on people's names to look at them. This only works if there are cameras that can see them, they aren't wearing agent IDs, or aren't using digital camouflage as changelings.
As the AI, you can quickly open and close doors by holding shift while clicking them, bolt them when holding ctrl, and even shock them while holding alt.
As the AI, you can take pictures with your camera and upload them to newscasters.
As a Cyborg, choose your module carefully, as only a cyborg reset module will let you repick it.
As a Cyborg, you are immune to most forms of stunning, and excel at almost everything far better than humans. However, flashes can easily stunlock you and you cannot do any precision work as you lack hands.
As a Cyborg, you are impervious to fires and heat. If you are rogue, you can release plasma fires everywhere and walk through them without a care in the world!
As a Cyborg, you are extremely vulnerable to EMPs as EMPs both stun you and damage you. The ion rifle in the armory or a traitor with an EMP kit can kill you in seconds.
As an Engineering Cyborg, you can attach air alarm/fire alarm/APC frames to walls by using your magnetic gripper.
As a Medical Cyborg, you can partially perform surgery, as you cannot replace organs, but you cannot fail any surgery steps.
As a Janitor Cyborg, you are the bane of all slaughter demons. Cleaning up blood stains will severely gimp them.
As the Chief Engineer, you can rename areas or create entirely new ones using your station blueprints.
As the Chief Engineer, your hardsuit is significantly better than everybody else's. It has the best features of both engineering and atmospherics hardsuits, boasting nigh-invulnerability to radiation and all atmospheric conditions.
As the Chief Engineer, the power flow control console in your office will show you APC infos and lets you control them remotely.
As an Engineer, you can electrify grilles by placing wire "nodes" beneath them: the big seemingly unconnected bulges from a half completed wiring job. The wire will be need to be connected to an active power source in order to function.
As an Engineer, return to Engineering once in a while to check on the engine and SMES cells. It's always a good idea to make sure containment isn't compromised.
As an Engineer, you can power the station solely with the solar arrays. They will provide just enough electricity to power the station, however their output is still much worse compared to the true engine.
As an Engineer, you can cool a supermatter shard by spraying it with a fire extinguisher. Only for the brave!
As an Engineer, you can repair windows by using a welding tool on them while on help intent.
As an Engineer, you can lock APCs, fire alarms, emitters, and radiation collectors using your ID card to prevent others from disabling them.
As an Engineer, don't underestimate the humble P.A.C.M.A.N. generators. With upgraded parts, a couple units working in tandem are sufficient to take over for an exploded engine or shattered solars.
As an Engineer, you can pry open secure storage blast doors by turning off the secure storage APC's enviroment power channel.
As an Atmospheric Technician, look into replacing your gas pumps with volumetric gas pumps, as those move air in flat numerical amounts, rather than percentages which leave trace gases.
As an Atmospheric Technician, you are better suited to fighting fires than anyone else. As such, you have access to better firesuits, backpack firefighter tanks, and a completely heat and fire proof hardsuit.
As an Atmospheric Technician, your backpack firefighter tank can launch cryofrost. This resin will extinguish fires and very quickly; it's ideal for plasma fires!
As an Atmospheric Technician, your ATMOS holofan projector blocks gases while allowing objects to pass through. With it, you can quickly contain gas spills, fires and hull breaches. Or, use it to seal a plasmaman cloning room.
As the Head of Security, you are expected to coordinate your security force to handle any threat that comes to the station. Sometimes it means making use of the armory to handle a blob, sometimes it means being ruthless during a vampire or cult incursion.
As the Head of Security, don't let the power go to your head. You may have high access, great equipment, and a miniature army at your side, but being a terrible person without a good reason is grounds for banning.
As the Warden, your duty is to be the watchdog of the brig and handler of prisoners when little is happening, and to hand out equipment and weapons to the security officers when a crisis strikes.
As the Warden, keep a close eye on the armory at all times, as it is a favored strike point of nuclear operatives and cocky traitors.
As the Warden, if a prisoner's crimes are heinous enough you can put them in permabrig or the gulag. Make sure to check on them once in a while!
As the Warden, you can implant criminals you suspect might re-offend with devices that will track their location and allow you to remotely inject them with disabling chemicals.
As a Security Officer, communicate and coordinate with your fellow officers using the security channel (:s) to avoid confusion.
As a Security Officer, your sechuds or HUDsunglasses let you see crewmates' job assignments, their criminal status, and whether they have a mindshield or not. A flashing green border around their job icon means they are mindshielded.
As a Security Officer, mindshield implants can only prevent someone from being turned into a cultist. It will not de-cult them if they have already been converted.
As a Security Officer, examining someone while wearing sechuds or HUDsunglasses will let you set their arrest level, which will cause Beepsky and other security bots to chase after them.
As the Detective, keep in mind that people leave fingerprints everywhere and on everything. With the exception of white latex, gloves will hide them. All is not lost, however, as gloves leave fibers specific to their kind such as black or nitrile, pointing to a general department.
As the Detective, you can use your forensics scanner from a distance.
As the Detective, your revolver can be modified to load .357 ammunition obtained from a hacked autolathe. Firing it has a decent chance to blow up your revolver.
As the IAA, try to negotiate with the Warden if sentences seem too high for the crime.
As the IAA, you can try to convince the Captain and Head of Security to hold trials for prisoners in the courtroom.
As the Head of Personnel, you are not higher ranking than other heads of staff, even though you are expected to take the Captain's place first should he go missing. If the situation seems too rough for you, consider allowing another head to become temporary Captain.
As the Head of Personnel, you are just as large a target as the Captain because of the potential power your ID and computer can hand out.
As the Mime, your invisible wall power blocks people as well as projectiles. You can use it in a pinch to delay your pursuer.
As the Mime, your oath of silence is your source of power. Breaking it robs you of your powers and of your honor.
As the Clown, if you lose your banana peel, you can still slip people with your PDA! Honk!
As the Clown, your Grail is the mineral bananium, which can be given to the Roboticist to build you a fun and robust mech beloved by everyone.
As the Clown, you can use your stamp on a sheet of cardboard as the first step of making a honkbot. Fun for the whole crew!
As the Clown, spice your gimmicks up! Nobody likes a one-trick pony.
As the Chaplain, your null rod has anti magic functions: it can destroy cultist runes by hitting them, and it makes you immune to cult magic.
As the Chaplain, your bible is also a container that can store small items.
As the Chaplain, you are much more likely to get a response by praying to the gods than most people. To boost your chances, perform blessings, make altars with colorful crayon runes, lit candles, and wire art.
As a Botanist, you can hack the MegaSeed Vendor to get access to more exotic seeds. These seeds can alternatively be ordered from cargo.
As a Botanist, you can mutate the plants growing in your hydroponics trays with unstable mutagen or, as an alternative, crude radioactives from chemistry to get special variations.
As a Botanist, you should look into increasing the potency of your plants. This increases the size, amount of chemicals, points gained from grinding them in the biogenerator, and lets people know you are a proficient botanist.
As a Botanist, you can combine production trait chemicals just like a Chemist. Chlorine and plasma (blumpkin) + radium (glowshrooms) equals unstable mutagen!
As the Chef, you can create a very wide variety of food with the crafting menu. You can find it by looking for the hammer icon near your intents.
As the Chef, you can rename your custom made food with a pen.
As the Chef, if you are low on ingredients, consider making something that has several servings to last longer among the crew.
As the Bartender, you can use a circular saw on your shotgun to make it easier to store.
As a Janitor, if someone steals your janicart, you can instead use your space cleaner spray, grenades, water sprayer or order another from Cargo.
As a Janitor, mousetraps can be used to create bombs or booby-trap containers.
As the Librarian, be sure to keep the shelves stocked and the library clean for crew.
As a Cargo Technician, you can hack MULEbots to make them faster, run over people in their way, and even let you ride them!
As a Cargo Technician, you can order contraband items from the supply shuttle console by de-constructing it and using a multitool on the circuit board, the re-assembling it.
As a Cargo Technician, you can earn more cargo points by shipping back crates from maintenance, plasma sheets, rare seeds from hydroponics, technology disks from R&D, and more!
As a Shaft Miner, the north side of Lavaland has a lot more rare minerals than on the south, but is a lot more dangerous.
As a Shaft Miner, always have a GPS on you, so a fellow miner or cyborg can come to save you if you die.
As a Traitor, the cryptographic sequencer (emag) can not only open doors, but also lockers, crates, APCs and more. It can hack cyborgs, and even cause bots to go berserk. Use it on the right machines, and you can even order more traitor gear or contact the Syndicate. Experiment!
As a Traitor, subverting the AI to serve you can make it an extremely powerful ally. However, be careful of the wording in the laws you give it, as it may use your poorly written laws against you!
As a Traitor, the Captain and the Head of Security are two of the most difficult to kill targets on the station. If either one is your target, plan carefully.
As a Traitor, you can manufacture and recycle revolver bullets at a hacked autolathe, making the revolver an extremely powerful tool.
As a Traitor, you may sometimes be assigned to hunt other traitors, and in turn be hunted by others.
As a Traitor, the syndicate encryption key is very useful for coordinating plans with your fellow traitors -- or, of course, betraying them.
As a Traitor, plasma can be injected into many things to sabotage them. Power cells, light bulbs, cigars and e-cigs will all explode when used.
As a Traitor, if you can find another Traitor and pool your TC you can buy a mega surplus crate, which costs 40TC but contains a lot of random syndicate gear.
As a Nuclear Operative, communication is key! Use ; to speak to your fellow operatives and coordinate an attack plan.
As a Nuclear Operative, you should look into purchasing a syndicate cyborg, as they can provide heavy fire support, full access, are immune to conventional stuns, and can easily take down the AI.
As a Nuclear Operative, stick together! While your equipment is robust, your fellow operatives are much better at saving your life: they can drag you away from danger while stunned and provide cover fire.
As a Nuclear Operative, you might end up in a situation where the AI has bolted you into a room. Having some spare C4 in your pocket can save your life.
As a Monkey, you can still wear a few human items, such as backpacks, gas masks, and hats, and still have two free hands.
As the Malfunctioning AI, you can shunt to an APC if the situation gets bad.
As the Malfunctioning AI, you should either order your cyborgs to dismantle the robotics console or blow it up yourself in order to protect them.
As an Alien, your melee prowess is unmatched, but your ranged abilities are sorely lacking. Make use of corners to force a melee confrontation!
As an Alien, you take double damage from all burn attacks, such as lasers, welding tools, and fires. Furthermore, fire can destroy your resin and eggs. Expose areas to space to starve away any flamethrower fires before they can do damage!
As an Alien, resin floors not only regenerate your plasma supply, but also passively heal you. Fight on resin floors to gain a home turf advantage!
As an Alien, the facehugger is by far your most powerful weapon because of its ability to instantly win a fight. Remember however that certain helmets, such as biohoods or space helmets will completely block facehugger attacks.
As an Alien, you are unable to pick up or use any human items or machinery. Instead, you should focus on sabotaging APCs, computers, cameras and either stowing, spacing, or melting any weapons you find.
As the Blob, keep your core some distance from space, as it is both expensive to expand onto space, easy to be attacked from, and does not count towards your win condition. Emitter platforms built in space are especially dangerous.
As the Blob, you can randomly repick your reagent type if the crew has adapted and protected themselves against your current one.
As the Blob, you fight a war of attrition: Take out medbay and fight in chokepoints to prevent continued assaults and coordinated burst damage attacks!
As the Blob, don't neglect the creation of factories. These create spores that carry your reagent and can chase crewmembers far further than you. Spores can also be rallied to swarm the crew and cause panic, and can even take over corpses to create much more dangerous blob zombies!
As the Blob, you can expand by clicking, create strong blobs with ctrl-click, rally spores with middle-click, and remove blobs with alt-click. You do not need to have your camera over the tile to do this.
As the Blob, removing strong blobs, resource nodes, factories, and nodes will give you some resources back as refund.
As the Blob, talking will send a message to all other overminds, allowing you to direct attacks and coordinate.
As a Changeling, the Extract DNA sting counts for your genome absorb objective, but does not let you respec your powers.
As a Changeling, you can absorb someone by strangling them and using the Absorb verb; this gives you the ability to rechoose your powers, the DNA of whoever you absorbed, the memory of the absorbed, and some samples of things the absorbed said.
As a Cultist, do not cause too much chaos before your objective is completed. If the shuttle gets called too soon, you may not have enough time to win.
As a Cultist, your team starts off very weak, but if necessary can quickly convert everything they have into raw power. Make sure you have the numbers and equipment to support going loud, or the cult will fall flat on its face.
As a Cultist, the Blood Boil rune will deal massive amounts of burn damage to non-cultists and set them on fire. However, two cultists have to be standing at the rune for its duration.
You can deconvert Cultists by feeding them large amounts of holy water.
The Chaplain can bless any container with water by hitting it with their bible. Holy water has a myriad of uses against cults and large amounts of it are a great contributor to success against them.
As a Wizard, you can turn people to stone, then animate the resulting statue with a staff of animation to create an extremely powerful minion, for all of 5 minutes at least.
As a Wizard, the fireball spell performs very poorly at close range, as it can easily catch you in the blast. It is best used as a form of artillery down long hallways.
As a Wizard, summoning guns will give everyone anything from a floral somatoray to a pulse rifle. Use at your own risk!
As a Wizard, the staff of chaos can fire any type of bolts from the magical wands. This can range from bolts of instant death to healing or reviving someone.
As a Wizard, most spells become unusable if you are not wearing your robe, hat, and sandals.
As an Abductor, you can select where your victims will be sent on the ship control console.
As an Abductor Agent, the combat mode vest has much higher resistance to every kind of weapon, and your helmet prevents the AI from tracking you.
As an Abductor, the baton can cycle between four modes: stun, sleep, cuff and probe.
As a Revenant, the Chaplain is your worst enemy, as they can damage you massively with the null rod and make large swaths of the station impassable with holy water.
As a Revenant, your essence is also your health, so revealing yourself in front of humans to harvest the essence of the living is much safer if you've already stocked up on essences from poorly guarded corpses.
As a Revenant, your Defile ability removes holy water from tiles in a small radius, allowing you to reclaim the station from the chaplain if they've been covering the station in holy water.
As a Revenant, your Overload Lights ability will only shock humans with lights if the lights are still on after a brief delay.
As a Revenant, your Malfunction ability in general damages machinery and mechanical objects, possibly even emagging some objects. Experiment!
As a Revenant, space is your friend. Breaking windows to space can cause massive damage and mayhem.
As a Swarmer, you can deconstruct more things than you think. Try deconstructing light switches, buttons, air alarms and more. Experiment!
As a Swarmer, you can teleport fellow swarmers away if you think they are in danger.
As a Ghost, you can double click on just about anything to follow it. Or just warp around!
As a Security Officer, remember that correlation does not equal causation. Someone may have just been at the wrong place at the wrong time!
As a Security Officer, remember that you can attach a sec-lite to your taser!
As a Terror Spider, leave wrapping of corpses to green spiders unless absolutely necessary. They need it to lay eggs!
As a Prince of Terror, you are powerful but usually on your own. Consider hit and run tactics to regenerate your health between engagements.
As a Brown Terror Spider, focus on smashing welded vents. You are weak in direct combat, but you can enable your comrades to go almost anywhere.
As a Terror Spider, protect the queen at all cost!
As a Terror Spider, don't forget you can move your nest if the crew is pressuring you too badly.
As a Terror Spider, try putting webs on white floor tiles, they are much harder to see there.
As a Terror Spider, sometimes quickly pulling an enemy into a web can ensure victory in melee combat.
You can swap floor tiles by holding a crowbar in one hand and a stack of tiles in the other.
When hacking doors, cutting and mending a "test light wire" will restore power to the door.
When crafting most items, you can either manually combine parts or use the crafting menu.
Suit storage units not only remove blood and dirt from clothing, but also radiation!
Sleeping in a bed can heal minor amounts of brute and burn damage.
The Experimentor has a chance to spawn hostile mobs. Be ready to run for your life when using it.
Space ruins can contain all kinds of interesting goodies, even a wand that can raise the dead!
Having a mindshield, or having an agent ID card will make officer Beepsky consider you less arrest-worthy.
You can make lasertag turrets, for the ultimate lasertag tournament.
Blob structures take half damage from brute damage. Use lasers.
You can hide paper in vents, but you have to use a screwdriver to open it first.
While the Standard Operating Procedures aren't fully rules, they are there for safety and professional reasons.
Killing the Wizard usually ends the round, unless they are a lich or Space Wizard Federation is RAGING.