Dreamix

I think machinists fit perfectly where they are, operations. Machinists don't do science or research, so they don't fit in research dept at all. They only work with already existing and mass produced designs, and don't invent or research new ones. Machinists also don't fix or improve or maintain the ship's existing systems like engineering, so they don't fit there either. What machinists mainly do, is supply other departments with gear, exosuits, hardsuits, and the like, as well as maintain borgs, AI, and IPCs. If anything it would be better as a cross-dept job of med-ops, but just ops is fine enough since we don't do cross-dept jobs.

I think this is fine. Caseless should be reserved to special unique guns that aren't in normal everyday gameplay. It's ultimately low effort to implement so it's fine if it's just for one or two guns really. It's really not going to kill the soul of aurora if caseless exists as an option for some guns. As for the rest of the doc, I feel like people read "standardization" and think "wow stop killing unique guns!!!1!". Reading through it, it sounds fine. It establishes what nations should have what weapons and calibers, and adds some cool stuff too like 64x64 gun sprites.

But why does a death have to amount to something? Why specifically deaths? Why the focus on deaths, and players of characters who have died? It was now decided we will get the memorial thingy, okay. So if my character died, they get put in the memorial, with some text about how they died, and a neat custom message. Is that meaningful? Maybe. But if my character did not die, and they were not exceptional enough to get a medal, then I sort of get nothing then? Is that fair? Not sure. Well, I guess, they get to stay alive and participate in future events and roleplay, I guess, but that's kinda close to just saying that participating in events is the "thing" you get out of them in on itself (and I think that's fine). But like, if I stop playing them anyway then I get nothing still. Or if I decide to stop their arc or kill them offscreen or whatever else. Other people are going to forget about my character in weeks if not days, no matter if they died in a event, or if I simply just lost interest and stopped playing them. I said before, I wish instead of a memorial that shows deaths, there was instead a terminal thing that showed everyone participating in the events, their roles and jobs, and not just specifically and only people who died. If the players of Aurora stop caring about events a few months after they happened, then... what does that mean for the people who did not die on them? I do think it's disrespectful and shitty to dismiss people with the whole "old lore don't care", but... Our server and its lore has been going for a long time now, so it's not really feasible to expect people to care about old events. Should we keep all the events and event arcs relevant like, forever? Like if people talk about for example Konyang for a few months and then it stops being relevant then like, that sounds good enough for me, we are going to get more event arcs in the future, new players, new characters, so it just can't be relevant and important forever, and it's natural at some point attention and focus will shift to something else.

Why was this not communicated before the vote? Why was it not communicated what people are actually voting for? Both the duties and expectations of 2ICXO, their authority, and also the species restrictions. When I voted for 2ICXO, I assumed this, over a year ago. I assumed that it would be actually 2ICXO, second-in-command. I would never imagine it would be "2IC but not actually" or "2IC but expected to promote 3IC to 1IC". I imagine a lot players did the same, or assumed that non-human non-skrell species could still be XO. Or any other assumption cause back then a lot of people were theorizing and discussing how it would look like. This should all have been communicated BEFORE the vote, so people know what they are actually voting for.

So basically, 2ICXO is... not actually second in command. This is, honestly and genuinely, bizarre to me, how such a simple idea of 2ICXO could be implemented like this. If XO has to find an acting captain and listen to that acting captain, they're not actually second in command, if the XO can't just assume command themselves. It's a weird mix of 2IC and 3IC. I would expect 2IC to actually be 2IC, and NOT be expected to appoint 3IC head of staff into a 1IC role. This overcomplicates the simple chain of command we had before. The vote was "do we want XO2IC or not". It did not mention about whether it would be restricted to human and skrell only, and I imagine a lot of people voted "we want XO2IC" under the assumption that other species could still be XO. And it did not mention all these rules that XO2IC is not actually 2IC. I am very much not happy of how this is being implemented. Not to mention how this took (almost?) a year to be implemented after the vote, which just feels like a big disappointment, to wait so long, with so many reminders and posts in the thread, being something that a lot of people were excited about, just to see this.

A thought. How about something like this (or even combined functionality), that would show everyone who participated in the events, what roles they took, if they died or not. Even could be as simple as just saving the end round crew manifest from the event to display there. Cause like even with the memorial/medals/etc, it would be a neat way to see or say "I was there", without either having to die to be put in the memorial, or having to do something super exceptional that gets you a medal or article mention. I think that would be very cool to look up the manifest from some event and be like, "oh X and Y were there, it was fun, we did Z together", or "oh I forgot John was there too, and we did the thing", or "I was there, back then, and this was my department, these were the good times...". Currently, this kind of information just is not kept or archived at all, and if you don't remember if you (or someone else) were there, there is no way to find that out. With the memorial/medals/etc, it's better, but it only works for dead or exceptional characters, and the average Joe still has no "proof" of being there at all.

On the memorial thread: I feel the discourse here is not very respectful of the people who commented on that thread, who were not liking the idea, as if they were the source of all of aurora's problems. Personally, I don't like the idea of a crew memorial with names of dead characters, I do not think it fits thematically and would not encourage a lot of fun roleplay. I do not think people's characters should be recognized for dying to event characters that appear once and never again. I do not think the memorial would help with character retention either, cause it's recognition only after death, and we should be encouraging the opposite, and give reasons to continue playing a character that is alive, and not the one that is dead. But, this is how I feel specifically about the memorial thing. On medals and recognition: I would be fine with other forms of recognition, like mentions in articles. I think these are harmless enough, and would make people feel like they've done something. But these should only be given to characters who have actually done something exceptional, and involved themselves in the event. I played the last synthetic nightmares arc event, I was ordered to guard the base, and then attacked the hivebot beacon thingy, but had to retreat due to injuries, so I would never really be considered to be given a medal or be mentioned in an article. I do not think medals or recognition should be given to characters for being robust or for simply doing their job, or characters who were in the right place and in the right time, assigned to the right team and job. I think recognition should be given for exceptional roleplay and affecting the arc, and not just for clicking good or random chance. I have not played any arc beyond the cold dawn so I don't know about what happened then. I don't like it when people mention these events as examples of bad/good things or behaviors, or situations we don't want repeating again, cause a lot of players simply just did not experience that. We have a ton of lore, and had a ton of events in the past, so it is simply just infeasible to expect the average player to know or care about all of them. Not that learning about those is easy anyways, with the event arcs just being dumped onto their wiki page with a huge word soup, and no simple explanation of what did actually happen that would be relevant to new characters. And actually, yes, I do think it is intimidating to see characters who have saved the whole spur 5 times in their life, killed 100 pirates or solarian marines or whoever else, etc and etc. Why would I create a new and fresh character, and spend weeks or months establishing them, if they're never going to be as important as these veteran 10 year old characters, and anything I do in or out of events would only pale in comparison? These are my thoughts on this topic, one can read them and say it's overanalysis, or a problem that does not exist, or a boogeyman, but this is how I feel regardless. On arcs and events: My opinion is that huge event arcs are simply just, not healthy for the server going forward. They take a long time to prepare, and require a ton of work, and depend on just a few people to work on them, leading to burn out. There is crunch, a lot of things are done days or hours before the event, which means mapping or balance issues because things are not tested well. There is an expectation that they are going to be huge spur-changing events that change the whole galaxy and affect everyone. People are excited about event deaths, or borgings, or the september mutiny, cause these are the only canon and lasting consequences to events. It is the symptom of the problem of most events being violent and where deaths are both expected and planned for by event staff. I've been saying this for a while now: I wish we had events that are more mundane and calm, and affect some local space, and not the whole spur, or even a nation, faction, planet. I wish we had smaller events, that require less work and preparation, but also were more frequent and common. I wish we had more canon presence on Horizon, in and out of arcs, more visitors and other mini-events. Every time I mention the things above, I am being told by staff that it is unwanted. I genuinely think the above would help with character retention, and would be more healthy for the server. If events were to be more mundane, that would help to change the perception about events being deadly, and deaths being the only lasting impact on anything. If events were to be smaller and more frequent, that means more people have a greater chance to do something meaningful. If we were to have more canon presence on horizon, it would let people outside of command and security jobs to interact with the arc. And like about any potential problem or issue of characters changing or affecting the world simply just completely disappears. We don't want people doing stupid things and affecting stuff, or bad actors derailing, with negative consequences for the whole event arc and spur. But if the events are smaller and less grand, all these risks are just gone. If we are helping just one ship or city or outpost, and we fail, we just move on and continue as before, or if we succeed, it's some locals being grateful.

Better screenshots from discord: Top Deck Mid Deck Bottom Deck So yeah. I flipped Horizon. There were plans to do something different (run CM with Aurora flavor, like last year we did Bay), but we got busy, so I did this instead. It was not perfect, and shuttles were kinda broken, but it was mostly functional otherwise, and inside the ship it was mostly okay just with visual/decorative issues. I've seen some people say it's better flipped like this. I've seen some people say it's awful and horrible and I'm evil and it's nonsense, and I hope they were joking, as I wanted this to be a mostly harmless april fools prank. I hope either way, that it was fun for a bit to see Horizon from a different perspective.

developer approved

The same question applies to current cargo shuttle. Why does that Orion Express outpost ask for money and won't just send us those 15 extra shotguns? Do they not care about Einstein stealing Horizon? Are we not part of the same organization? But like. During events staff send more stuff on the cargo shuttle anyways, circumventing the ship's accounts and budget. Like during (iirc) the sol pirate events, they sent like lots and lots of ammo, but I'm sure there are other examples too. I imagine the elevator and budget to be more of a soft limitation for standard operation - budget that was allocated only to that specific shift. Can always fax CC to expand the budget, but that invites HRA to come in looking and investigating as to why did the OM buy 500 pizza boxes in this shift alone. There's also no reason as to why staff or event runners couldn't expand the budget for events (or... reduce it, or limit it somehow).

I think a cargo elevator would be very very nice, and I agree with this suggestion. I think cargo bounties could just be moved to "deep storage", to be delivered later, by next shift or something, so they don't need any special new mechanics or code.

IRL military memorials and memorial days (I would think) usually are either to military personnel dying while serving their nation, or civilians who died due to an invasion or war. Horizon crew is neither. Horizon was never really fighting some heroic war and protecting freedom of the spur and its people. It makes no sense for SCC to put a memorial on Horizon, cause it'd only be a reminder to other crew that they are all expendable and can be sent to die to protect company interests. The same company that can, and has done it in the past, cyborgify you if you act against it.

I do not want this, if it has names of actual characters who died. I do not want people to OOC boast how many characters of theirs have died and were put in the memorial. I do not want to see any kind of OOC or IC drama about whether someone deserves or does not deserve to be put in the memorial. After all, why would SCC want all deaths to be put in there? How about crew with anti-corporate views, or outright acting against SCC? Or people who died in volunteer missions where the danger of death was known ahead of time? Or really any death that wasn't strictly defending Horizon or SCC interests. I do not think this would really promote any cool roleplay, and it'd mostly be just grim and depressing, given how many people have died and in what circumstances. It's pretty depressing to see SCC allow a memorial to people who have quite literally "died for the phoron company" and its interests. It would have a lot of names if it includes everyone, like 30 at least I'm sure, and that list will only grow as we go on with events. I also think it would be intimidating and exclusionary for new players or characters, and only show them all the events that they were not part of. It's not easy now to introduce a new character to the ship, and a memorial won't make it any easier. I could maybe be fine with this if it was just a memorial to anyone who died on duty, without actually listing out all the names.

I feel this is just a very old thing (that maybe even made sense years ago), that no one noticed is a thing in all these years. Looking at the code, it was last modified almost 2 years ago when adding species specific age restrictions, but it actually was added... 8 years ago, maybe even before that. I'm 100% sure it will just be removed now that there's PRs up. I would be very surprised if it wasn't.

How's the results of the poll and vote?