Server Culture

The goal of Hammerfall is to provide a fun SS13 environment for our playerbase that doesn't sacrifice fun mechanics or an individual's potential for great accomplishments for the sake of forcing interaction and/or roleplay between players, but whose rules and mechanics still encourage doing so, and will keep the players feeling excited, engaged, and invested, since their actions in-game can shape the future of the ongoing canon.

The intended playerbase:

• Is interested in playing SS13 as a game
• Will not always eschew casual RP in general; Roleplaying as a loner or hermit is fine, and can be a fun challenge.
• Enjoys participating in the setting
• Will contribute to the ongoing in-game day
• Is interested in or willing to tolerate ERP on the server

The environment and setting should be kept suitable for this intended playerbase, and as such, there is a set of criteria that the environment should be kept towards:

• Being “high roleplay.” Most interactions within the walls of the safe zone are fully roleplayed, and there are rules regarding escalation to mechanical combat.
• Has natural roleplay opportunities offered by the features of our particular server.
• Allows roleplay and mechanics to coexist, with rules designed not to sacrifice the fun of either.
• Allows an individual to accomplish large tasks even in isolation without much roleplaying. Some things may be difficult and/or time-consuming to do alone, but not impossible with good preparation and a good understanding of the game mechanics.
• Will eventually use a combination of persistence mechanics, staff-curated events, and a robust exploration system to ensure that there is always something new to be done/explored and that significant accomplishments/progression by the players can have a lasting impact on the game even when the game server must be restarted.

What we intend to do that is unique to our server is to preserve the progression, both in breakthroughs and in disasters, of the players between server restarts, even if the Safe zone was partially or mostly destroyed and needed to be evacuated. Over time, the map can be updated based not just on game development but also on in-character developments and building projects, notably if approved by the High council.

This does not mean that every single bit of damage or the like that happens to the Safe zone will be saved across restarts. It means that in certain situations, say the Safe zone falls under attack or during an event the crew collectively decides to use a powerful bomb or to evacuate, that this can be made persistent to give the prisoners something big to work towards going forward, such as retaking a lost area, building a new one, or finishing the repairs following a successful defense that were not completed during the off-screen time. Player constructions outside the Safe zone and additions by the engineers to the Safe zone will generally be saved, to allow progression and reduce the amount of monotonous work that has to be repeated after a restart. As an obvious buffer against griefing, nothing will be automatically saved.