Game FAQ
So by this time, you've checked the Quickstart and have a basic understanding of what happens in game. But you've got more questions. Good thing you came here!
How do I speak on the radio?
Radio chatter is an essential part of the game. Joining the conversation is quite simple and mainly depends on the type of headset Nanotrasen provided you with. No special access or equipment is typically required for:
| Channel | Frequency | Prefix | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| General | 145.9 | say ;[your message] | |
| Hand-held radios | varies | say :lh / :rh [your message] | Speak into a radio held in your left or right hand respectively. |
| Intercoms | varies | say :in [your message] | You have to be within range or it won't work. |
| Devices with an open mic | varies | N/A | Range may still be a factor (radio in your inventory vs. on the floor). |
If you have a job-specific headset such as engineering, medical or security, one or more department-specific channels are available to you.
Job Specific Frequencies
| Channel | Frequency | Prefix |
|---|---|---|
| Civilian | 135.5 | say :c |
| Research | 135.4 | say :r |
| Medical | 135.6 | say :m |
| Engineering | 135.7 | say :e |
| Security | 135.9 | say :g |
| Command | 135.8 | say :h |
Silicon Frequencies
| Channel | Frequency | Prefix | Notes
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Robotic | N/A | say :s | For cyborgs, the AI and people with a machine translator implant. Works even during a Solar Flare. |
| AI's internal radios | varies | say :1 / :2 / :3 | Available to the AI, AI shells and AI-controlled cyborgs. Each prefix controls one of the three radios, the settings of which can be manipulated with the Access Internal Radios panel of the mainframe itself. |
| AI's private channel | 144.7 | N/A, tune in manually. | In case PDA messaging is unavailable. The mainframe monitors 144.7 by default. |
This list is not complete (see Clothing for further information). If in doubt, simply examine your earpiece by right-clicking on it to get an overview of all supported frequencies.
How do I talk in Out-of-Character Chat (OOC)?
Alt + C. Or just O if you have WASD mode on.
Note however that for Goonstation #2, OOC is turned off during a round. This is because Goonstation #2 is, essentially, no-RP/RP-optional, meaning character roleplay is not expected from you, though any RP is welcomed. As such, you can directly ask people about game mechanics, freely talk about "rounds" and "game modes", discuss whatever shows you're watching or games you're playing, etc. in-game. This makes having OOC enabled redundant, and no one has to worry about "IC in OOC" or "OOC in IC" as with some other servers. However, just because there are no roleplay rules does not mean there are no rules.
The above paragraph, however, only applies to Goonstation #2. On Goonstation RP#1, the Goon roleplaying server, OOC remains enabled during a round, and there are rules over what your character can say in-game and what you, a BYOND player, can say over OOC. For example, you can't use OOC to out the antagonist, if you die, you cannot yell at people in OOC to find your body, and if you can't find a way to ask about game mechanics in-character, you'll have to ask over mentorhelp or OOC. While you won't get banned for saying "round" instead of "shift" or whatever, other players will be upset over it. For more information about OOC and IC rules on the RP server, please see RP Rules.
I'm a traitor (or other antagonist), what do I do?
Remember that your objectives are just a suggestion. You can complete them if you want but it's fine to ignore your objectives completely and just murder people if you wish. However, it's probably best to adminhelp if you don't intend to do anything traitorous at all so that a new traitor can be appointed.
How do I open containers?
There are a few ways:
- Hand-held containers: Drag the sprite to your character sprite. As mentioned further down, this is also how you loot other characters.
- Lockers and crates: Open and close by clicking on them. Standing on top of a locker while closing it will put you inside.
- Cigarette packs and pill bottles: Hold the item in one hand, click it with your other (empty) hand.
- Satchels: Special equipment that miners and botanists get. Drag an item (seed, fruit or ore) onto it and you will start pulling all items of that type adjacent to you into the satchel. Click the satchel to dump everything in it on your tile. Click a table to dump it out there, or a suitable machine (the mining fabricator, mainly) to fill it with the contents.
- Crates can be filled by dragging items on top of them, much like satchels.
- Sleepers, cryo chambers and genetic scanners accept people. Have one grabbed and click on the container to put them in, right-click it and select "Eject" to get them back out.
- The machines in artlab accept large artifacts. Drag the artifact to the machine to put it in, drag from the machine to an adjacent tile to pull the artifact back out. You, the machine and the artifact all have to be adjacent for this to work.
How do I loot people or put items onto them?
Drag their sprite onto yours, click the item you want to remove. To add an item to them, hold the item in your active hand and click on the slot which the item fits in.
I was arrested, how do I remove handcuffs?
Click the resist button and wait a minute or so (longer if you're laying down). You have to stay still while removing your handcuffs. If you're moved around, you'll be interrupted and have to start over! Other people can also remove them for you using the method in the question above.
How do I buckle people into chairs?
Drag their sprite onto the chair sprite. This will buckle them in. You can unbuckle them by clicking on the chair, or they can do so themselves.
Why is my space-to-throw hotkey not working?
This thread has what you need.
Why am I so slow?
The game sometimes slows down massively, making you (and everyone else) move at a pace of a few tiles every half minute. If it's not that, check the following:
- Are you pulling a corpse or a container with one? Pulling corpses (or people who are lying down and not on help intent for that matter) slows you considerably.
- Are you wounded? That will slow you down. Having one or both your legs missing will also severely slow you down, if that wasn't obvious. Observing yourself will reveal if you're missing any limbs.
- Are you cold? That will slow you down a lot. Being cold is also often caused by being near a hull breach, and hull breaches tend to slow down the game overall.
- Are you wearing some kind of emergency suit, or not wearing shoes? That'll do it.
- Did you accidentally click the "walk" button?
Are there any handy shortcut buttons?
For a list ingame, use the 'Hotkeys' command in the command bar.
| F1 | Use adminhelp. |
| F3 | Use mentorhelp. |
| ALT + C | Speak in OOC. |
| ALT + L | Speak in LOOC (Local OOC). |
| ALT + Click | Examines object. |
| SHIFT | Activate sprint mode |
| CTRL + Click | Pull object. |
| CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + Click | Displays all the objects on the selected tile on the right-hand infobox. The objects can be interacted like normally: picked up, examined, etc. |
| Page Up or Middle Click | Change your active hand. |
| Page Down | Uses item in active hand as if you clicked on it. |
| Home | Drops item in your active hand. |
| Space | Toggle throw mode. |
| Space + Click | Throw item. |
| CTRL + P | Toggle point mode. Move the mouse cursor over an object and click to point at it. |
| CTRL + Up and CTRL + Down | Scroll through command history. Highlight the command bar first. |
Cyborg/AI only
| CTRL + Click | Open closed door / close open door, Turn on APC / turn off APC, Activate / Deactivate Turrets (Turret deactivation control). |
| SHIFT + Click | Bolt / unbolt door, Set turrets control to Lethal / Set turrets control to Stun (Turret deactivation control). |
| SPACE + Click | Electrify door for 30 seconds. |
| Numbers 1-3 | Selects your item slots respectively (WASD only). |
| Number 4 | Deselects your active item slot (WASD only). |
| CTRL + B | Use the *birdwell emote. |
Space pod controls
| Space | Fire main weapon. |
WASD mode
An AZERTY compatibility mode can be activated by using the aptly-named Toggle AZERTY verb. If WASD mode was already set, you have to disable and then re-enable it before you can use the new layout.
| Tab | Toggles WASD mode on/off. |
| Numbers 1-4 | Selects your intent: Help, Disarm, Grab, Harm respectively. |
| W A S D | Move up, left, down and right respectively. |
| Z Q S D | The AZERTY equivalent. |
| E | Switch your active hand. |
| C | Uses item in active hand as if you clicked on it. |
| V | Equip the item in your activate hand if possible. Identical to the HUD button. |
| T | Talk. |
| G | Switches your keyboard input's focus to the command bar. |
| Space | Toggle throw mode. |
| P | Toggle point mode. |
| B | Point shortcut. Hold down and release B over an object to point at it. |
| Q | Drop item in active hand. |
| F | Fart. |
| O | Talk in OOC Chat |
| M | Custom emote |
| ALT + S | Juggle items, honk. Equivalent to the *spin/*juggle emotes. |
Emotes
| CTRL + A | *salute |
| CTRL + B | *burp |
| CTRL + D | *dance |
| CTRL + E | *eyebrow |
| CTRL + F | *fart |
| CTRL + G | *gasp |
| CTRL + H | *raisehand |
| CTRL + L | *laugh |
| CTRL + N | *nod |
| CTRL + Q | *wave |
| CTRL + R | *flip |
| CTRL + S | *scream |
| CTRL + W | *wink |
| CTRL + X | *flex |
| CTRL + Y | *yawn |
| CTRL + Z | *snap |
All of these can also be done via the Say command or hothey. It's just like talking aloud in general, but instead of entering say "words or such, you do say "*emote. In fact, this is pretty much the only way to do the loads and loads of other emotes that don't have keyboard shortcuts, like *give, *slap, and, of course, *piss. Experiment! You'd surprised at the amount of body language coded in.
I come from a different server, and these hotkeys are super confusing.
Not to worry! Within the Character Setup page, there's an option called Use /tg/code Layout? to turn on a Goonstation version of your beloved /tg/ hotkeys. For the most part, the original shortcuts are still there, but some are left out, particularly the numpad ones. Here is a list of the shortcuts that still remain.
Any Mode
| Shift + Click | Examines something |
| Alt + Click a tile | Displays all items on the tile, in the Status tab |
| Ctrl + Click | Pull something |
| End / Ctrl + W | Toggle Throwing Mode |
| Page Down / Ctrl + A | Use the object in your active hand as if you clicked on it |
| Middle Mouse / Page Up / Ctrl + S | Switch your active hand |
| Home / Ctrl + D | Drop item in your active hand |
| Tab | Toggles WASD Mode on/off |
WASD Mode
| Tab | Toggles WASD mode on/off. |
| Numbers 1-4 | Selects your intent: Help, Disarm, Grab, Harm respectively. |
| W A S D | Move up, left, down and right respectively. |
| X | Switch your active hand. |
| Z | Uses item in active hand as if you clicked on it. |
| E | Equip the item in your activate hand if possible. Identical to the HUD button. |
| T | Talk. |
| X | Toggle throw mode. |
| Q | Drop item in active hand. |
| O | Talking OOC Chat |
| M | Custom emote |
What happens after I die?
There's a chance you'll be revived if someone finds your body and drags it to the medbay before the chef finds it. In the meantime, you can type observe to keep your camera focused on one specific player or ghost to spectate the station freely.
See Ghost for details.
What are medals? How do I earn them?
Achievements! They're basically Goonstation's way of rewarding you for exploring content and recognizing the progress you've made in SS13. Most of the time, it's just a nice little green notification to everyone on the server, but some medals will reward you (purely cosmetic) skins! You can check these out whenever you're in-game (if it's pre-round or haven't joined the round, it just won't work) through Claim Reward in the Commands tab. Check out all the medals you've earned via the Medals command and see what medals you can earn here.
Unfortunately, the exact means of earning medals is considered Secret content, so they won't be on this wiki! That doesn't mean you can't look the code for them though, or there isn't a certain Something Awful thread that can tell you the exact means of earning these medals. And discussing medals in general is allowed, just not revealing how to earn them.
What is this XP thing?
A very, very, very in-progress game system of some sort. So in-progress that most of the coders do not know what it does, because the one guy who was working on it, keelin, aborted the project a long time ago. Whether it has or will have an in-game effect, whether we can expect XP for other jobs, how XP is earned, etc. it's all completely unknown. Right now, the only things that we know for sure are that it's only available for Janitor and that there's a public leaderboard for the amount of XP earned as Janitor.
What happened to LLJK2/LLJK1?
They were renamed to the Goonstation #2 and Goonstation RP#1 servers, respectively. The LLJK naming scheme has been around since basically forever, including back when the server was much more than nominally affiliated with Something Awful and largely populated by actual Something Awful goons. Since the name change is relatively recent, you'll still see many people refer to these servers by their former names. (And obviously, past, pre-name change people, videos, forum posts, etc. will still use those names.)
In case you're wondering, LLJK stands for Leet Like Jeff K, some weird, silly in-joke from the Something Awful forums.
Everything on my screen is white/rainbow colors, what's going on?
If you can see icons but everything outside of arrivals is covered in white squares, click this link for instructions.
If you can't see any icons/can only see your HUD and everything else is a white screen, see this forum thread for instructions.
If everything looks like it's covered in rainbows, update BYOND. Updating your Direct X will also help resolve this issue, go here to Microsoft's website.
If you are on the escape shuttle and all you can see is the wormhole background, update to the latest version of BYOND.
If anything on your screen is funky, UPDATE TO THE LATEST BETA VERSION OF BYOND.
I can't move/keep moving in one direction
Due to bugs currently in the movement system, it sometimes breaks completely, not allowing you to move at all or constantly moving you in one direction.
If you can't move you have to press tab twice to switch control schemes twice, this fixes the issue usually.
If you keep moving in one direction you fix it by using the controls to move in the direction you're moving in.
I have to double click for every action I do
This is due to the fact that you have tooltips turned on. To fix this you have to turn off tooltips in your character creation menu.
What do I do if my question isn't answered here?
Use the mentorhelp command in-game or press F3. Mentors are community volunteers who know a lot and are happy to share their knowledge. If you run across a question in game, you can always use the mentorhelp command, and if a mentor or admin is on you can expect a quick and efficient answer. Mentorhelps also show up in the admin as well as mentor IRC, so it's worth asking even if there are no mentors online as someone might see it and answer.
Do not discuss anything identifying (such as your name or where you are in-game) with your mentor. This is considered metagaming and is frowned upon. Acting on information about the current round gained via mentorhelp (such as the identity of antagonists) is not allowed.
Also please do not mentorhelp questions about rules, like "Is it ok to kill this guy", Questions about whether something was valid, like "This borg killed me, is this ok?", questions about secret chems other than general hint requests, or questions unrelated to the game.
For more details, see Mentorhelp.