Scheveningen

I don't have the time or negative energy required to nitpick bridge crew behavior and be forced to repeatedly argue a case as to why someone shouldn't be roleplaying a specific way that will inevitably be reframed as me not personally liking how someone is playing, leading to no visible enforcement. They are not whitelisted characters, and therefore the effort expectation is unreasonable from them because anyone can play bridge crew. Unless someone is griefing, harassing, or otherwise playing the game in an objectively meanspirited, unsportsmanlike and awful way towards others, there is no reason for any player to be expected that "just adminhelp it" will lead to any meaningful change. Changes in the game code to restrict or free up access absolutely change the way the game is actually played and will modify the impact of certain jobs during the average round. Security got considerably less powerful when their .45s and tasers got merged into disruptors instead. They also got less considerably oppressive when their code green camera access got restricted. These were objectively good changes because it considerably handicapped them being able to participate in annoying character behavior. As for why consuls and corporate reps get access to command, this is something they would be more reasonably privy to as they are both diplomats for different contextual reasons. They are also whitelisted, and there exist far more considerable IC and OOC consequences for purposefully leaking information to non-command. It also makes zero sense for them to do under any situation, whereas bridge crewmen through the merit of their own freer range of characterization may make up a wider variety of IC/OOC excuses for why leaking said information outside of command is okay in-character. They should be disempowered from being able to do that, period. Their primary role is to pilot the ship and run the guns, their job is not to be involved with management affairs. As far as being a command assistant goes for their secondary duties when neither piloting the ship or running the guns is relevant, it should clearly be a case-by-case basis should one command member or another choose to empower them to assist them or their own department. Because then that would be the choice of a member of command staff to empower someone to be more helpful. Having proactive bridge crewmembers trying to make themselves useful without being by default tapped into command comms and knowing entirely what is going on would be far more interesting gameplay for them. Code solutions for a problem are always going to be more meaningfully impactful than simply telling someone the root of their problems is that they are not issuing complaints to the admins enough.

My post is gonna get political, but let us be honest, the Aurora lore itself is so intensely recently entrenched (going back to at most 2 years ago) with ideas and concepts that are eternally brainworming our political contemporary that it would be very, very naive or otherwise deceptive to imply that the social spaces between the game and real life are separate and not at all related to each other. Many aspects of contemporary real-world politics - such as in the political systems and rhetoric that currently exist, not the stupid culture wars as to who gets to use a bathroom - are very much integrated into the current state of the lore and the game, and both settings share problems, but the game state aims to be an escalation of many of these problems, most especially that being the settings' hyper-advanced version of libertarian capitalism. I see no real reason to sanitize the lore of fascism, but it should obviously not get to the point where they are the main antagonist. We should be able to have lore antagonists that are evil not because they pose an existential or paranormal threat, but because their evil is banal and selfishly motivated. I think everyone here can fairly agree that on an OOC level that fascism is an incredibly evil and bad political system unlike any other, and that really stupid shit occurs when you just let it into your society. Not much needs to be explained on that point, but the other lesson that keeps needing to be told is that, as a system of government and a political strategy to achieve power in government, it often employs incredibly effective social manipulation tactics in order to con people into working for fascist ideology. The idea didn't die during [insert time period], it's a stubborn movement built on hatred and resentment, which are intense human emotions that are unlikely to go away anytime soon. The Solarian Alliance is an example of an entity that failed to meaningfully grow in any capacity for far too long, and this stagnation caused national resentment and restlessness in its populace. Frost and his ATLAS fascists took advantage of this by blaming it on the xenos. Lying is easier than other forms of attempting to gain power, and evidently also seems to be incredibly effective because fact-checkers mean nothing to people who aren't the target audience of fact-checkers (i.e., the current sitting political elite whose power is being threatened by the rise of fascism). A majority of fascist support comes not from ontologically evil and homicidal individuals but from selfish enough people who have been fooled with, and sold, the idea that someone else is the cause of their own explicitly personal problems. As for the specter of fascism that very clearly lingers in Sol lore, you can thank two people for putting it in in the first place (neither of which are still around), and you can thank the "no significant retcons" policy as well. The impact Frost, ATLAS, and the SRF have made has been evident in more than several lore articles and arcs that under the current policy, their past/current existence cannot be undone, and the ghost of a purely genocidal death cult is not going away anytime soon from the lore. They are, unfortunately, too integral to the main story. I do hope however that we stop seeing the constant pornography of misery being pushed in prior arcs that achieved little besides pushing the sentiment that the only thing we are going to see is more wars every financial quarter. There is a pretty big silver lining to all this, though. Anyone who thinks it not an ill-advised idea to play anything along the lines close to an obvious Solarian fascist is absolutely free to be clowned on. It is free to bully evil characters. It is okay.

Yo hey I'm like the guy you contracted out from my company to give you a +1 on this application or something? I don't entirely like recall exactly what my boss told me to post here but I'm just gonna go with the general vibe and say this application is good and stuff and you can like do roleplay well and effectively and such, dude. Pshyah. Rock on.

Reporting Personnel: Nevaeh Amalthea Job Title of Reporting Personnel: Surgeon Game ID: (I have no ability to check but it was the round before cmb-dAxv) Personnel Involved: Nevaeh Amalthea - Surgeon, Victim Norman King - Operations Manager, Offender Secondary Witnesses: Artemis Grey - Head of Security Time of Incident: n/a Real Time: 2/2/2023 Location of Incident: Medical Nature of Incident: [ ] - Workplace Hazard [ ] - Accident/Injury [ ] - Destruction of Property [ ] - Neglect of Duty [ x ] - Harassment [ ] - Assault [ x ] - Misconduct [ ] - Other _____ Overview of the Incident: Operations manager Norman King called me to the medical bay to ask me to provide a set of lungs and an appendix for the cargo bounty system. They proposed I use a monkey for this, I replied that as long as prosthetic replacements were provided for the animal, I wouldn't have an issue with performing the operation, but I would otherwise refuse to do so if I didn't have this condition fulfilled, because I personally and morally object to killing animals, and it goes against the basic vow I swore going into medicine. They threatened to press charges and made various insults at me, loudly declaring "who hired you?" and otherwise making a huge scene over it, and claiming prosthetic replacements were expensive - and relative to what I saw on the bounty docket for what operations would get in exchange, this was provably and obviously not true, either. While nothing came of this I refuse to be bullied by someone who is supposed to represent better standards as command staff. Submitted Evidence: I have no provided forms, written testimony, recordings or anything of the sort to provide in this situation. Would you like to be personally interviewed?: [ x ] - Yes [ ] - No Did you report it to a Head of Staff or a superior? If so, who? If not, why?: Head of Security Grey got with me later in that shift and told me they weren't going to press charges personally due to other goings on for that shift and the fact the situation wasn't that egregious, but otherwise not much could've been immediately done. Actions taken: No action was taken to my knowledge. Additional Notes: n/a

It is important for me to clarify I bear no ill will towards (derogatory) bridge crewmen, and to instead explicitly state the intention of this suggestion is to rectify a common problem within the structure of command that isn't feasibly fixable outside of a code solution as proposed in the title. This is a fairly easy problem to follow, which I will outline: Bridge crewmen, are like any member of the crew as support staff. They are not command staff, and hold no authority, and only exist to pilot the ship and run the sensors and guns. Any member of the crew that is not command is not obligated to command-sensitive information, which is why the command channel exists, to easily provide such information to a secure network in a discrete manner. Therefore, the bridge crewmen should not be privy to the command channel. They are very specifically trained support staff which command should still be able to easily communicate with, but should not be easily privy to command-sensitive information of any kind. Especially not from an OOC perspective when a non-whitelisted person can easily nose into command business. I believe the implementation as provided in the title would present more benefits in gameplay/roleplay terms than create problems. It is also, from my perspective, far more feasible than an entire command playerbase being told the only way to fix various issues associated with dealing with bridge crewman as command is to keep submitting IRs against them, which doesn't fix the long-term issue being that bridge crewmen should not be even given the ability to misbehave as mini-command. I don't want BCs to be whitelisted much like anyone else and I think this is a better middle ground that solves most of the issues.

Immediate endorsement on my end. Purpl is a great roleplayer, measured and responsible. I'd really like to see them take the reins and see how they do.

I've spoken to their RD as much as I reasonably could during 3 round resets in a row, and "perfectly entertaining" is the best way I could categorize the experience I had with the whitelistee. They seemed competent enough as well, but I think just not being intentionally subversive is a merit on its own, and I felt this character and player was really easy to get along with. +1.

I've seen this differently, given that all mechs contain code in them to allow penetrating shots to injure the pilot. The PEAC anti-tank missiles are highly penetrative and ignore all worn armor, and for the most part will always hit the pilot. That's the point anyway; to kill the pilot, you're not going to completely obliterate the mech itself- and yet the EMP effect will massively cripple it as well as severely injure said pilot. The energy shield mod on it will soak all projectiles, however, including the AT missile. Frontal assaults won't work there. Where the take comes from is myself using aim intent to guarantee direct hits every single time someone comes into my visual range with the PEAC. Basically, you can't go wrong with it. If you can guarantee hitting dead-on due to how the PEAC's accuracy is 4, you're not going to have issues instantly maiming people in one shot. It is an extremely powerful target softener that often finishes the job on its own.

3+ years ago, I posted a thread on literal 9/11 requesting security get a disposable rocket launcher instead of the very oppressive ion rifle pre-nerf. This suggestion was sincere but with balance considerations to make the one launcher actually a "one-and-done" weapon. The thread received a dismissal, scathing criticism, and the thread was later buried to inactivity. 2 years later, the PEAC was added. It was not very accurate, and was buffed to almost literally never miss on a direct click of a mob almost another year later. Today, the PEAC is a turbofuck weapon that instantly shatters ribs, deals so much organ damage, one-shots mechs and IPCs to instant death, and is generally a better anti-antagonist weapon than anything else in the current game state. All it takes is one to break your ribs, and a follow-up reload and re-fire on the already-broken chest to overkill 1 of 3 possible organs that are likely to immediately instantly put a non-IPC into lethal. They will collapse from pain, vomit, and die from MSOF, heart or lung damage in 1-2 minutes. Not only this, but the PEAC has 3 or 4 extra cannon cartridges and, as long as additional ammunition is ordered, will never really wear out. You can pretty much put any person into serious pain or lethal condition from a single direct-fire shot, if they are not an IPC, in which case you're guaranteed to kill them instantly anyway. What's the price of this? Well, sometimes the PEAC can collaterally hit people behind the original target. This is sometimes good, sometimes bad. It also detonates in a small explosion after, but this is just usually additional burn damage (20-30?) on top of the 45 damage, armor-penetrating direct hit. The AT missile that comes from the PEAC will also delete windows fairly reliably, and cause breaches. None of those downsides actually mean anything. Direct hitting your intended target with the PEAC will guarantee that they are dead. The only species that could feasibly survive it is a Diona, but I can't fathom anyone is theorycrafting to play Diona antagonist to survive PEACs because playing Diona antagonist by any other metric is an exercise in frustration due to how slow you are and very susceptible to being hunted down due to requiring light to survive. The PEAC isn't an anti-armor device, it's an anti-everyone device. It should be moved out of the security armory, it is way too good at instantly ending rounds and makes conflicts on the shipside essentially meaningless because nothing traitors can order will be able to deal with the threat of getting direct hit by the PEAC.

I honestly don't see an issue with their OOC comments on-server, I think it's pretty fair to be a bit dismayed regarding what they commented on because it obviously sucks to be in that situation. But as I've posted, I think they need to work on putting more effort to showing English fluency (it's in the rules), having better lore comprehension (critically important to making a character and interacting with your immediate surroundings and counterparts), and avoiding using Out of Game/Character indicators when using the in-game formats whenever possible. I think it's a fair mention to not want to see someone's Discord handle in-character, or any OOC bracketing on a business card either. I do not endorse or condone any other statements besides my own in this thread. I do not support any alleged patronizing statements and do not "feel" one way or another about the individual OOCly, but rules-as-written, there are indeed a minor assortment of issues with the player's roleplay that could easily be addressed with some coaching.

Round with the dominia stuff cited: clX-cOru The changeling round with the business card thing: clX-dezJ

Not sure what round ID this is from, and I can't get the round ID for one of the rounds I played last night (the 19th, thereabout), but I'm fairly certain it was a changeling round where I played my RD for the following instances below: I'll point out some obvious problems that give me a little grief; 1. The player's grasp on the English language, their grammar, and their spelling is so questionable that it really hurts immersion. It's difficult to take interacting with their character seriously when it feels like I am dealing with grade school level writing. This is not really a common issue in this community, even with the amount of English as Second Language speakers that exist in the community, as the rest of those here make a very avid attempt to be fluent. Generally speaking, as a result of Aurora, they tend to be better English speakers/writers over time. I haven't seen much improvement from this person since they've been here for several weeks. 2. The strange overlap between IC and OOC information in a business card is just absurd, for the most part. The content of the business card also kind of rambles and hints at rather disorganized thoughts, which doesn't make sense for a psychologist in their 40s. 3. While the very first image I posted showing a quote from this character was extremely funny, in seriousness it seems like the person doesn't have an IC or OOC understanding of what a culture is. You don't just convert to being French because you like baguettes, art, poetry and losing wars. It also doesn't make sense for characters to not at least be marginally politically aware of what's going on in the setting, especially not for an older character who at least ought to be informed even if they believe in incredibly bad opinions. I'm sure Biesellite citizens get an onslaught of media coverage of how wacky it is to live in the Empire, right?

Not every job on the Horizon has to serve an essential function

I can verify this occurred as an observer and later participant as a revenant for this round. The way this round developed was legitimately so insane from the command and security level that I cannot believe that sequence of events unfolded from a "fellow" whitelisted player. This is the sort of behavior you'd expect from the stereotypical frag-hungry IPCurity of yesteryear where synthetics were roleplayed so stupid as being unable to value human life on any meaningful metric. The worst part of this is that this is literal "blue-on-blue" unnecessary violence. Why is a head of security killing his own crew when they're clearly not doing anything that would merit forced disarmament? Pesic and Ose did not even do anything that could be associated with antagonist behavior, let alone criminal behavior in that instance. He opened the crew armory because he declared the situation a combat emergency (which, really, was not accurate to the current situation either and was also another incorrect call), and then tries to tell a crewmember they're not allowed to be armed from the crew armory. Perhaps if this was an immediate concern, the crew armory should not have been opened in the first place? The LOOC gaslighting about "oops aim intent wasn't on" regarding Ose followed by the escalation of force on Pesic after Ose and then deadchecking Emma Pesic is genuinely insane and would not have happened if literally anyone else was playing HOS that round. This is just awful and should not have happened. This is the exact kind of over-escalation and bad faith security behavior that would merit a temp-ban at the very least. It violates the written and spiritual nature of the rules to play HOS like this.