Scheveningen

It wasn't intended to be hostile but more of a question pointing out what seems to be a cognitive dissonance with wanting to enjoy the game yet wanting others to be put out of the round faster/more efficiently. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that people want mediums through which you roleplay to die faster (and thus not be able to roleplay) on a roleplaying server. This also is a project thread for proposed, intentional changes. The intent of the PR is to impose aspects of the belief that people should not be able to use chemicals as effectively as right now (in the case of peridaxon, erasing them from viability, since phoron salts is very volatile and difficult to synthesize for an inexperienced chemist, and for an experienced chemist may not even be worth the time and effort invested into it), which will cause the effect of people not having access to crucial medicine that may save them from a really shitty death. The PR and the logic behind the PR is the problem. It's fine to have an opinion about gameplay, but it doesn't necessarily mean it should be used as a reason to change everyone's gameplay.

I loathe surgery, whether I'm the person on the OR table, the one holding the scalpel or the general treatment person that hands the patient off to the surgeon. Even if I'm the only surgeon, I'd rather have very mild and non-threatening cases of having to do surgery on someone else instead of being swarmed by triage-level critical patients that could die any second. Chemicals by design are intended to prevent people from dying so easily, despite it being incredibly easy to die no matter what the previous thread and some anecdotal examples said. For every one occasion where you survive 10 bullets to the chest without being in hardcrit, the other 9 cases are situations where you forgot to tune your sensors to full shortly before your lung critically popping due to a pressure change, someone decapitates you, or you get shoved into a locker in maint, etc. This game is bullshit sometimes. Thankfully there are aspects to this game that make the process of dying counterable or feel a lot less bullshit, and while they can be 'too easy' in saving someone's round sometimes, that's kind of the point, because they're a counterbalance against how easy it is to die in the game. A point I want to bring up to anyone who thinks otherwise, do you really think you have a leg to stand on when trying to determine how other people should be experiencing the game? If applied inversely to you with a different case but the same logic, is the reasoning any more or less fair?

The big three for the foreseeable future: 1. Settling the sentience/emotional capacity debate, and post-Kyres phase of putting to rest the last 5 years of the horrible synth civil rights arc that almost never ended, just to tie up things he never managed to. 2. Reforming character roleplay guidelines for IPCs to better conform to a standard that equitably permits a certain degree of "free roam" with IPC character designs, while also tying up certain loopholes or loose ends that make IPC characters very easily susceptible to bad character traits, which inevitably creates poor character behavior motivated from those attributes. 3. Reviewing the whitelist process for synthetics, and reforming whitelist app acceptance guidelines to be tuned to a specific intent of what I + the future lore synth team want to see out of potential IPC characters in the future. Anything else would be putting the cart before the horse. If I plus whatever team is chosen cannot accomplish the above three in a meaningful fashion, anything else we do has greatly diminished impact and won't improve the standing of IPCs in terms of a roleplay and gameplay feature on this server, than if we accomplished the above three and then moved on to creative direction decisions. We have to fix what is broken before moving onto adding new stuff in. I will say that my intent with IPCs after these big three aspects is very ambitious and I have a lot of ideas, but I don't think the current period of time is the right one to talk about the various directions that I could take IPCs with. A synthetic maintainer is direly needed to first fix any problems that makes the species unnecessarily burdensome to the rest of the playerbase. That's the brunt of my initial focus, so I want to be able to accomplish the first phase before planning in-depth for the second one. I agree with this assessment entirely and I better understand the problem. I will hold myself to the better standard described by you.

The issue with cameras and the counterplay argument regarding that, is that each camera has its own randomized wires for what has respective functions attached to each wire. Similar to how secure doors function, every camera has randomized wires. This is an incredibly irritating stealth fact that makes cutting cameras quietly a very time-consuming and almost not worth it task. You can avoid tripping the camera alarm wire by only pulsing wires to get a feel for which one is the alarm, which will not set the camera alarm off for the respective camera. Theoretically you can just cut every single wire that is not the camera wire, but this is still work. You can get a rhythm down to almost reaction-time with practice, but it is not every day you quietly dismantle a camera, so most people aren't gonna be in practice.

Remember when we had the discussion about requiring AI to be whitelisted? While a more feasible idea than removing it, I'm wondering whether it's worth the effort. If you can actually manage borgs to become malf and hack one another, that would be amazing.

That's a bit concerning if AI only appears on malf rounds. That's really easy to metagame. It'd be better if an AI slot cannot be latejoined instead.

I'm incredibly jealous because Moon sorted her information into a google doc to be compartmentalized, neat, tidy and with actual categories highlighting important subjects. It's way less of a mess like my application is. That's definitely inspired me to sort things better for the future. I would have to agree that matt's concerns are valid, however even in consideration with Moondancer's reputation for emotional spikes, she's an incredible creative mind, has great ideas that would go to waste if she weren't at least considered for the team. I'm sure the stipulations for what's expected of her are already set, and she knows what to make of it.

I'll be able to handle it much better than I've handled it at my prior best, if that puts it into perspective. That sounds boastful, I'm sorry if it does, but I want to take this role with confidence and to be fair and just. Pushback to change, much like change itself, is always inevitable, so it seems meaningless to get angry as a defensive strategy against others. I have things put into better perspective, based on my past failures.

I've a few awkward things to bring up, it's awkward because I'm also applying for the IPC species maintainer position and I don't want to make this seem like I'm posting these concerns for any other reason beyond concern. You, Sytic, Paradox and I were discussing various synthetic lore subjects, much of which there was plenty of unanimous agreement on. The subject of self-preservation and the relationship it has with an IPC's programming and personality, and which takes a backseat to the other, was the first phase of this discussion. The discussion then trailed into the religious territory, and whether an IPC would engage in religious thought experiments or outright be an acolyte/proselyte of a particular faith. You stated: - Within the context of presuming that IPCs, as synthetics, would view religion as inherently illogical and not worth the time. Sytic and Paradox argued the direction that a synthetic is still capable of performing illogical actions with faulty reasoning that is objectively untrue. Now, even if say, this was in the context of 'religion' as a subject being inherently illogical, and that was your absolute position on the matter, this still isn't really an issue. Just trying to lead into how the discussion went afterward, however, so that we can fairly set chronologically as to how this discussion happened. The discussion continued down this path where each side (not including me, I was merely observing the conversation unfold before deciding to really touch the serious aspects) argued their points. Sytic and Paradox brought up learning algorithms and neural networks to posit their say, as you would state your fair say. It then went this direction: We can, at the very least, establish that there are some creative direction opinions that differ from you and I. And you and Sytic and Paradox and some others that would join the conversation later. Paradox chose to get Moondancer, a previous synthlore team member (and an IRL student of real life AI, and the subjects surrounding it), to chip in regarding synthetic-religious related topics that they delved in and developed in the past. They had a fair deal to contribute, if anyone is really curious about this discussion and its contents, Ctrl-f in the lore channel for this timeframe. 10:16PM EST, of course. Onward with the main subject, however. A lot of the disagreement was presumably focused around the hot topic of whether an IPC could reasonably be religious or believe in superstition. Admittedly, this conversation did get into territory where it was you vs. sytic/moondancer/paradox/myself. It is pretty awkward to get 'dogpiled' but for the majority of the time that wasn't really what happened. Anyway, there was a lot of arguments posed by Moondancer/Sytic/Paradox who are evidently much smarter than I am, and a lot of what they had to say was pretty logically sound. The tone of the subject was their evidence against some of your arguments, versus your apparent belief that IPCs cannot be capable of religious thinking or thinking in an abstract/supernatural way. http://www.evolvingai.org/fooling Essentially, the above article stipulates that neural networks (the framework for AI) can be rather easily fooled. And when brought up incorrectly, AI can be deceived into becoming very superstitious. IPC lore in particular reinforces this with utility functions and reinforcement learning. Apparently you weren't convinced to agree, though. What followed was you saying this: Can I just say that I really don't appreciate you having said that? Quite frankly I don't really care or mind about what opinions you hold about the lore alone, but it starts to concern me when not only does your creative direction massively differ from the group of people you spoke to, but your response to a large amount of helpful data was to answer with a double-edged strike about the previous synth maintainer, in addition to referring to the direction of the discussion and its participants as being "lunacy". Anyway, further down, Pan joins the discussion along with the rest of the party mentioned above, and it's some more back-and-forth about your belief that it wasn't reasonable for an IPC to believe in religion unless it tangibly had something egoist and selfish to gain from the relationship as a religious practitioner. You then establish some interesting opinions about the emotional capacity of an IPC. I reply with, "Anyway I feel like if you want to play a religion-hating atheism+ synthetic character that only values LOGIC, why not play cyborg/robot/android?" followed with a joke about a Ben Shapiro-inspired IPC and how far one could get with the concept. You replied with, "I never said I did, but OK." And then this interesting dialogue happened, I guess. And, yeah, it's kind of clear the metaclique comment before pan's response was a pretty clear jab, but I don't think this should be a crucifix, just pointing out where this went wrong. I won't say the following discussions in its earlier phases was one-sided, because it did seem like you were still given an opportunity to reply to the most salient aspects of the other side. I can probably guess who told you these things, but rather than going that direction I will just establish that whoever told you that the people you were arguing in opposition with were somehow affiliated with a metaclique... are/is absolutely wrong. I will say, however, that this is the second time you made an assumption that was not backed up by evidence - but, someone gave you this impression as if it were true, and it is not true. I will not blame you for being deceived, though. I do want to state that I do not really appreciate being associated with metacliques as if that somehow makes my opinion of less credit or value. I don't appreciate that the same assumption was made of other people, that their motivations are solely to support their metaclique and not that they have a personal opinion, whether it is based on facts or not. I included pan's comment here, because I really don't understand how you came to the conclusion that all the people you were arguing against were associated together in some metaclique that rushes to each other's defense anytime something happens to one of them. This is an incredibly complex and pessimistic way to view a situation, you know. Is it not easier to assume that there was just simply a fair number of people who disagreed with how you saw things, and they argued their fair say against yours? I feel like this seems easier to understand and excuse than trying to push the idea that anyone who disagrees with you in a certain number must somehow be in an insidious metaclique. We're all on the same side, you know, just here to have fun and make our experiences more interesting? There's no need to take the side of "these guys are in a metaclique", because it's unreasonable to believe that just because someone told you that was true. I cannot imagine what the motivations were of the person or people who gave you this impression, for surely they are far more in the wrong for destabilizing the conversation by introducing this false variable to you in an attempt to present it as truth. And hey, I understand the nature of feeling like you're being backed into a corner arguing your say against an entire room's that may disagree with you partially or entirely based on content or methods. It is important not to snap at people, however, because in the context of a discussion, the only things at stake is "being considered right" or "being considered wrong." And I feel as though you should not care so much about either case that you are willing to snap at people with rude assumptions of character. I want to bring up another subject, but it's probably better suited for DMs rather than on the main forums. My major gripes with what happened earlier today was seemingly that you deflected a lot of other people's fair say - even if they backed their opinion with plenty of data, scientific concept and solid theory, etc. - in order to maintain your position(s). A couple of other incorrect assumptions also happened on your part, exacerbated by the degree of which the assumptions were made and what they assumed. I don't really think any more or less of you despite this awkward conversation that happened in #lore_channel of the discord. It seemed more likely that you were caught in a very awkward position once the discussion reached a specific boiling point, as we all managed to cool off after and treat one another a lot better. I think you're pretty intelligent as far as engaging in a discussion goes, despite the roadbumps it was still a worthy discussion to have. I wish you luck on this application, though, and I hope there are no hard feelings regarding the discussion and how it developed.

I was the HOS in that gyazo gif. I wasn't moving as quick because I was laughing so hard at this situation and repeating "WTF" at my own screen.

My initial priority will be to stabilize aspects of the IPC identity before making moves with narrative direction. Rather than flipping IPC lore on its head, it would be more accurate that I'd be giving it a good facelift. It's a definitive possibility that things will change, perhaps a bit radically, dependent on who I decide will be on the Power Rangers team as synth devs.

..Oops, I misread question #6, as to how I'd deal with offenders. Yeah, I don't want to make it a point that business is done inconsistently where the synth team is asking for reflex whitelist strips when reported context looks really bad, but hasn't been analyzed further than surface level as to what went wrong. Ensuring investigations are done properly and appropriately in the interest of equity is a priority I want to focus on.

I'm so sorry for this essay-writing, but all of these are very good (and tricky) questions that deserve exploration. 1) Creativity: As mentioned before, the 'character coaching' is a particular method I intend on testing to see how effective it'll be in practice, since 'on paper' theory only goes so far, but that's one of the best bets of outreach we're gonna get without getting awkwardly invasive into the affairs of other players. I want to avoid the nightmare scenario of being accused of elitism for coaching certain characters over others, though, as I understand that there are awkward possible implications with any action that can be taken. In regards to problematic IPCs, I intend on ensuring a clean slate in terms of the relationship between any player and the new synth team. The context of previous relationships with players and the new synth lore team will be disregarded, as I think it is important to start over fresh and not have any awkward lasting grudges with one system carrying over into the next. However, I do not plan on giving particular offensive characters a lot of chances. I'm not looking forward to it, but I understand the necessity and responsibility of having to tell a player "no". I will endeavor to make sure that "no" is not the only thing that can be taken away from the discussion about the problematic nature of their character. 2) Whitelists: I'll take the hits as they come. Better me than anyone else who boards the synth team, as I can take vitriol in large amounts. 3) Golden Deep: I do not intend on disposing of the Golden Deep. We will find an adequate place for our Golden Bots somewhere, as they are too fabulous to kill. 4) Purchase: I am not really a fan of the concept, honestly, but it is easily not as offensive as other issues. It should nonetheless be considered that purchasing an IPC is incredibly expensive (massive cost short-term, may pay off long-term?), moreso than just loaning them for work purposes (short-term cheaper, long-term more expensive). You'd have to be sitting on a substantial nest-egg to be able to purchase an IPC. I will not force any retcons for previous IPC purchases, however. It will simply become more difficult to do as a private person in the future. 5) Characters: The best way I can describe it is this, since it's similar to the infamous "tajaran reproductive organs" question. I will not deny that there are possibly IPCs in our universe with chassis functionality built towards a specific career path, you will not be expected to see them on a corporate space station, considering the unnecessary mass and weight involved with having large synthetic faux-mammaries. It will severely hamper the effectiveness and flexibility of an IPC if they have such unnecessary implants fixed upon their front of their chassis, so it is incredibly unlikely for an IPC to be hired on with such an appearance. Not even as a service IPC will this be excusable, and individuals who find the prospect of boarding the station as a Shell prostitute amusing enough to try to pull off, will inevitably find themselves in a position of regretting doing that. Naturally, this intended 'discriminatory towards large mammaried persons' change is moreso to defeat characters designed to ERP bait rather than it is to minimize the representation of the experiences of those with large breasts, fake or not. I should note that there are other servers for that, as "IPC with giant breasts" is not a character element I am interested in, no matter how interesting a singular character might be in other aspects. It won't be tolerable to have certain physical aspects of your character to stick out in everyone's face in an offensive manner. 6) How would you handle a non-expressive, 'emotional' synthetic? Are their emotions 'real' to them, and do they have a full suite of these 'emotions'? I find that emotions for a synthetic, or at least 'feelings' or whatever you define as picked up through sensory substitutes for organs like eyes/ears/etc., are a really difficult subject to convey to someone who may have difficulty understanding that a lot of senses that come naturally to a person may be depicted differently to a completely different 'species'. So we may have to deconstruct aspects of this question first to be able to answer it appropriately. Firstly, synthetics do not feel fear, or pain, or remorse, by a standard default. Now, all of this is only true if synthetic intelligence is not given principles (i.e., laws) to abide by. Such principles may include self-preservation. Self-preservation means to prefer to avoid damage to the self, and by extension avoiding situations that would certainly cause serious damage to a synthetic, if not total destruction. Another principle is having an actual set of morals, so that depending on the IPC, there are certain actions depending on context that may be dishonorable, or other acts that are honorable and 'good' to others. If an IPC inadvertently wrongs another individual while this morality core is active within their system, they will not immediately self-destruct or try to delete themselves. Similar to how humans deal with guilt, an IPC for a time may nearly overflow attempting to sort out information and come to a conclusion as to what went wrong, similar to computers when they undergo a crash or hardware fault. If they are even capable of rebooting to tell you what went wrong, of course. Nuance regarding one IPC's morality core and another's will differ, and I would prefer it to differ. A system I want to implement with some developer help in the future is allowing for some additional depth to character-creation that adds "morality core" aspects to each character, which will determine on a character-to-character who has these kinds of morals, and someone else who has those kinds of morals. How this will be available to access in-game will likely either be through records only, or examined by a roboticist... anyway, I must digress. Sneak-peek of things that may come, I guess. But to answer the question, emotions will not apply or even be relevant to an IPC the way it is for a human being. The concept of 'feeling' the world and the people around you, as an IPC, will be different from how a human being experiences it. The differences will be distinct, but at some point I do hope that the difference feels important enough to players that they can actually see the value of playing IPCs. 7) What do you think about the synthetic emergence debate as a whole, especially in regards to the 'my emotions are real to me' argument in contrast to IPCs who are undoubtedly emotionless? Do you think it is a worth-it debate, and if so, will that colour your opinion on how you change synthetics on the server? The best way to put it is this. The way an IPC physically, socially and morally views the world around it will be determined as valid as any other person who has their own view on physical, social or moral subjects. They could be right according to one, or wrong according to another. IPCs will (still?) be capable of holding opinions on subjects, having preferences due to personal quirks/experiences/characterization. It will be intentionally left open-ended whether an IPC can truly love, or hate, or feel joy or feel anger. I do enjoy this debate, for the most part, and the ability to experience the world and situations will certainly be different to an IPC, but they may end up finding themselves in quiet moments how similar they are to other sentients. The average, tradition-minded humanoid may be up in arms over the implication that an IPC can love or hate, though. I do have a few stipulations about that, though, and specific boundaries for people not to cross in the interest of hopefully not gentrifying the IPC experience for others. It should be understood by others that I expect a little escalation, and a lot of experience before I'm willing to accept someone for roleplaying an IPC in a way that seems emergent and expressive. Newer IPC players should get comfortable with understanding the basics of how a robot thinks and how they experience the world, because they need that basis as a starting point. I do expect some explanation for what character growth caused a certain spike in expressiveness/emotion if and when it happens. To restate as a tl;dr to this point. The concept of feeling things based on circumstances, the current tone of a situation, and relationships with others; aka emotion - should be considered to be interpreted and executed differently than when a human experiences an emotional event. Humans will lash out sometimes in instinct, rashly, because of chemical imbalances or even raw feeling like hate or fear. An IPC isn't expected to succumb similarly to such instincts. Unlike a human, they are capable of being able to think and attribute their processes to many subjects at a time. Based on the IPC's moral code (influenced but not dominated by their programming, ofc), they may just as well make a difficult decision similar that humanoids have to deal with, but I would expect there to be a difference in why a difficult decision was made by an IPC, versus as to why a human made that same decision.

1) How do you plan on handling the open-ended nature of the debates around synthetics? More than likely it'll be settled once and for all by allowing an evolution of characteristics beyond just "boring robot" while not reaching the precipice of "Human+". When I say that, it's because right now there's a strange mix of people who play IPCs like very simple synthetics with very low social capacity, and then those who range up towards "intelligent, almost dangerously self-aware". I dislike the premise of "Human+" possibly more than most people care to, so don't worry, I know what direction I want to take and I know what limits I want to impose in terms of my own ambitions. 2) What's your personal opinion on how an IPC should be played? This is a difficult question, as it's just as hard to be an arbiter for someone else's roleplay and nowadays I rarely want to risk offending people with an off-base analysis. I often find it less problematic to take the inverse out of this question, in What's the wrong way to play IPC? - as that is easier to answer and deal with. This is pretty much how we'll be able to determine if someone is roleplaying an IPC correctly, is to first identify if there's any flaws to their portrayal of an IPC. If the flaws are minimal, then we seek for strengths. It is important we know what to improve before we start lauding some person's character for their strengths. Naturally, roleplaying a boring husk will constitute as an immediate flaw. I do find that it is an intrinsic part of being an IPC to have a simulated personality with depth and evolution to it, without crossing the awkward bounds of "feels" territory. I find that IPCs that roleplay very bland, simple synthetics would be better suited roleplaying cyborgs instead, as the divide in complexity is a rather huge leap of difference between IPC and stationbound. 3) Do you believe current synthetics to be problematic in the way they are portrayed, e.g. too emotional, lack of interesting characteristics, etc. Why/why not? Often, "too-emotional" IPCs are not problematic in the fashion that they are too expressive, but because of the problem character's overt expressiveness, it motivates them to do things that are otherwise rather excessive and, in the context of IPCs, can be quite immersion-breaking and irritating to deal with. A line in the sand will be drawn in this regard as to what is acceptable or unacceptable. Often, I find that it is not the loudmouth IPCs that are a problem, but it is the ones who immediately step up to violently defend their friends with no consideration for risk while being a confident, no-fear loudmouth that are a problem. Lacking depth in a character is also another concern I have with IPCs, too. I do not find it acceptable that people utilize the IPC whitelist to make throwaway characters that have very little characterization, goals or meaning in the universe that is set out for them to grow and expand as individuals. It's tiresome to see, not just for me but based on discussions I've had with others that share a similar opinion, and I want to make sure that aspects of IPC character creation has careful attention paid to it in the near future. I'll endeavor to make sure current and future players have this ideal conveyed to, so that no problems arise from future transitions. 4) What's your personal opinion on how an IPC should think? How do you attempt to exemplify this on the server? I hate to be deflective, but it certainly should depend on circumstance. Is your IPC opportunistic, or are they selfless? If they are opportunistic, they will look out for #1, but will endeavor to be discrete when screwing over others for their own benefit - as any synthetic realizes, it is important to not get caught when committing a crime, because that's what unwise organics do - And what's the gain in cheating someone if you get caught? Very suboptimal. If they are selfless, they will look out for others, sometimes at their own risk. But they have to calculate first that self-sacrifice does not lead to a zero-sum situation where nothing was gained and everything was lost in the meaningless sacrifice. Dying for nothing is also, very suboptimal. To an IPC, principle must come after results. It is essentially expected that IPCs think of themselves in some ways superior to organics through obvious objective measures (I don't breathe, you do, by technicality my method of survival is more efficient and less deadly), but not in a boasting fashion. Ego is not a tangible concept to an IPC. It is meaningless to boast of one's accomplishments, but humility is just as meaningless to them. They recognize ego and humility as human concepts and understand how they affect the behavior of organics, but only in theory. Such things don't apply to them as concepts that they can personally grasp and allow it to influence them. They understand anger and are conscious of its effects on people, but they themselves are immune to angry impulses. 5) If any of these are problems to you, how do you seek to resolve them? A lot of it is going to be reforming character creation guidelines for IPCs in accordance with some examples outlined above, as well as the guide on how to roleplay them, and then those standards will be enforced as time goes on. It may be easier to outline some "don't"s first on the wiki if I get hired on, but depending on who the team is composed of, we'll see how things go. It's also been on my mind to coach certain synthetic players on example characters they will use to play several rounds with, to serve as a good example for others to enjoy gameplay and RP with. It requires active involvement and time investment, however, but the effects might be more immediate than just sitting back and hoping people will get the right idea someday.

Mistakenly put that there since I thought it gave tech. It never did, was just a weird write-down. Fixed

I have no idea. By that I mean: I don't think I was ever told so, but it has been over a year since then and my memory is not especially good, especially right now as I'm taking new meds and probably couldn't even name all 50 states in the US much less recall something as important as a staff member telling me I should never apply for staff again. I do know you're referencing my really terrible swan song as a moderator and the impact it had on me in terms of reputation. It was pretty bad, I've gotten better since then.

https://youtu.be/xmrPVAENKuE I made cool lights in science, space lubed departures because I was bored, and made a landing strip for anyone caught by the space lube. My partner in crime was Schwann.

Ckey/BYOND Username: Scheveningen (ckey), Scheveningen#0188 (discord) Position Being Applied For: IPC Species Maintainer Past Experiences/Knowledge: I was on the lore team back in 2014, though I do not recall my precise role. I was the first human lore developer during another time period. Examples of Past Work: The current Combat Robotics page was appended (https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Combat_Robotics) and modified from my initial forums proposition (https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11547-accepted-combat-robotics/). I had a fair deal of fun writing that. I also wrote the proposition for the Supreme Order of Christ, but that never became lore, sadly. Other work of mine has been lost over the annals of time and is Schev Apocrypha. Additional Comments: I've a few goals in mind with applying for the IPC/Synthetic Species Maintainer. Firstly, the Kylo Ren Arc. I wish to finish a lot of what my master (@kyres1) started or never got to realize. I understand the reasons for why the previous synthetic event arc was cancelled, particularly in that kyres has other dedications beyond just spess. Much of what I intend to bring back is the SLF, Rudatek and the Lancers back into relevance. I was personally a bit disappointed with how the event arc in particular was handled, and I personally wish to do them better than the end they got. I also want to bring in a third synthetic antagonist group, one that serves as a foil to both the SLF and Rudatek, similar to how the two groups are foils to each other now. I also want to fix some inconsistencies with IPCs, particularly with details regarding how they fit into the setting, the nature of what rights an IPC has when self-owned or otherwise, and otherwise be one of the members on the synth team that contribute to making the "species" more enjoyable. Secondly, I want to put it out there that while I am signing up for the maintainer role, I fully intend on treating any deputies that sign up as if they were an equal on the team we're all applying for. This is particularly because I want a team that can feel comfortable airing their issues with synth lore, and otherwise be contributors to making the bad parts not as prevalent, and likewise contribute their strengths to a team without the awkward "middle-manager to subordinate" relationship. I prefer blunt honesty over courteous white lies, particularly because I'm quite bad at reading intent over text and I'm not very good at reading whether someone has an issue if they don't outright say it. Part of the reason I am also applying for maintainer because I understand the responsibility that is entailed with adding or removing a whitelist from a player. Given the tentative and difficult nature of doing such a thing, it is a stressor I do not want placed on someone else who only has creative direction interest rather than having to deal with the dirty work of disciplining a problematic roleplayer. I will "take one for the team" in that regard of being someone who is the direct person to go to regarding whitelist issues, as it is not a glamorous job that I'm sure nobody wants to do, and surely other members of the synth lore team in the near future would appreciate not to be the go-to person to receive complaints themselves. Thirdly, regarding whitelist issues. I have no intention of 'wiping the slate' or dramatically changing how people play IPC. I don't really care for lore reworks unless they're absolutely necessary to fix something that is broken. I have little to no interest in absurdly massive scope lore arcs, though familiar antagonistic synthetic groups may occur in the limelight if I am accepted, particularly so that there is nothing wasted in future event planning. I want people to enjoy IPC, rather than hating playing it or hating to have to deal with IPCs. Getting others who don't play IPC to like IPC characters is a trickier endeavor, but it is something I will try to work out with whatever crew is hired on. It is being taken under personal consideration, however, that inactive players may have their whitelist removed under the principle of inactivity. If any slate is to be wiped clean, it's only for players who haven't been around in ages, or for players that haven't shown a good faith effort in portraying IPCs appropriately in roleplay. Either way, I still prefer the policy not to remove whitelists unless absolutely necessary. Not that there is anything wrong with leniency, but I believe there was too much of it in the past to the point where said leniency and trust was abused. There will be a degree of quality control and less tolerance towards chucklefucking as an IPC, but I do not intend to be oppressive or domineering about it. Reports of poor behavior as an IPC will be taken seriously, but fairly in the interest of keeping as many players around as possible, rather than removing them in the name of roleplay elitism. My essay: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mBM3PtCdsP7nkoZ4o-z7qcM4KswK_GAK9TRj_be7rEc/ I wrote it on the subject of what it's like for a testing-phase positronic brain to have its rare interactions with people. Please enjoy and offer feedback.

A one week advance for everyone to adjust to a new style of play isn't unreasonable. I think it's a good idea.

Supporting this application. OP seems to have a pretty good idea of where to take human-oriented narratives.

As in, making them and deconstructing them? It's kinda pointless. If you have 3 of a very tech level item but you're 5 or so levels behind in a certain tech level, the way the RND system is coded is to "catch up" the current levels based on how advanced the item was to break down. This makes it rewarding to break down particularly complex items. When playing with this method, though, this also invalidates breaking down less complex items and is considered a "skip" in RND. The large tesla power relay and large power transmission devices, when broken down, will manage you tech levels of far greater amounts. edit: OH JESUS you mean the circuit kit one lab over from RND. Did not think of this, I'll try it out.

Weapons (particularly, firearms, not melee weapons) also don't go into evidence storage, they go into the armory. I normally toss said paraphernalia into a crate in the armory so that an armory thief can still pop it open for goodies.