Scheveningen

BYOND key: Scheveningen Character names: How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Years. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: I want to play the other half of my roster again, and then some. Why did you come to Aurora?: At the time, I strove to find a server that had a meaningful gameplay experience with strong interactions between its players/characters. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: Yes. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they?: I received a tempban awhile back. See previous application for details, as I will not repeat what was already covered there anyway. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is, and should be about: Roleplay is essentially building a character with a personality, background, and identifiable mannerisms into a setting that would reasonably have them. It is defined by strong character interactions that build on top of each other and further develop a character and makes future interactions even more deep, meaningful, and invested. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: The OOC purpose of a head of staff is twofold, to ensure the station has the right leadership, and secondly to ensure that every crewmember - even themselves - is accountable to their interactions with other characters, should the need arise. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: Demonstrate a capability to follow the rules and to otherwise stand out in contributing to an enjoyable, and unoppressive experience, overall. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau ceti and how it affected your character and their career?: Why is this even a question, relative to the others which have even greater and more relevant importance to an application like this? I have too many characters to go into detail for each scenario in which the recent arcs have changed their lives -- but not really. My previous app already pretty much covers this, not a lot actually meaningfully changed for who my characters work for, as well as their current commitments, apart from some rebranding of organizations. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted?: Pretty much all of the head of staff roles here and there, plus the consul. I enjoyed the Zo'rane consulate perhaps the third most. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking: Vira will be/has been my Captain, Strotdrec my Chief Engineer, Lara possibly to become a CMO but I hadn't really decided yet, Etilka to be HoS, Jun to be RD, and Aveka is the consul there. How would you rate your own roleplaying?: Average to above-average. I am experienced enough to know what I am doing. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action?: I understand this. Have you familiarize yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles?:I've been around longer than some of the guides on there, actually. I am familiar with their contents and regularly use the wiki for specific pages when I am in-game, because not even I have internalized every detail. Extra notes: Feel free to ask questions, if asked nicely. Rude remarks and distracting long diatribes need not reply.

On one hand, the sprites shown in the PR look comically demonstrated, on the other hand they're also eerily horrifying. In seriousness that degree of execution doesn't look like anything I'd want to see in terms of character differentiation on this server.

Hardly the indictment of the status quo that you think this is, lmao. Seems like things are working as intended, if there is admin enforcement behind it? Character skills are both parts set by the player to give themselves and the staff an understanding of their character's skill limitations and where their personal expertise lies. And then, the player is expected to roleplay that specialization/limitation dichotomy. If they do not, it's questionable roleplay, if they really do not, it's breaking the rules.

Can't say I support this. Certain players would weaponize this theoretical policy against staff members in order to get details on whether or not staff discipline was doled out against another player. Information that not every player should even be privy to.

A few things. You seem to really undercut yourself in relation to this position. Consider how long Kyres was in this position - and it was a sizeable amount of time that rivals most singular staff positions. He still ran out of stamina eventually. Success as a staff member is partly supported by an individual's own self confidence, measured and moderated by some other attributes not incredibly important considering you have them in spades anyway. You're not an aggressive, combative or hostile person, you're known in the community as a peacemaker. And your constant efforts in humility are appreciated by many, but be careful to not act in the expense of yourself if you want to act in that position for a long time. Secondly, there seems to be this feeling of bias - one I do not share, but this seems to be a hot button topic anyway, and the conversation seems to be leading to a point where this hypothetical may become reality. Let us say the staff sentiment here required you to recuse yourself from Unathi lore in order to acquire the deputy loremaster position. Would that be something you would understand and be ready to make such a sacrifice, leaving a sudden vacuum in Unathi lore development that you so enjoyed managing, or is this something you'd be extremely hesitant to do, valuing current status quo over the other? Pretend also there isn't a compromise midway choice, considering the amount of staff members in the past that not only wore many hats, but also commanded responsibility and power in relative senses in the community. Personally, I don't view you as the type as a powermod/user. So assuming a compromise situation did occur where you could be deputy loremaster and unathi maintainer at the same time, I feel as though you'd manage the twin responsibilities fairly. Besides, if you really were so bad, the Izweski Hegemony would be rolling over the Coalition or Dominia with their super dreadnoughts right now in lore or something ridiculous, which isn't the case. I unfortunately expect it to be a possibility that you end up being required to abandon the Unathi maintainer post, less out of necessity and more within line of current staff principles. Anyway, I personally view you to be the best of the candidates - not to say the others are bad - as you have the strongest attributes that would generally be a pre-requisite for the position. You have my resounding endorsement.

they don't do this commonly right now, it probably wouldn't change a thing.

It's coinflippy because security is able to very easily analyze what weapon the round antagonist is using, so they pick the armor type that hard counters them. On the other hand, the armor is hard-countered by a different damage type, but the game balance shouldn't have "hard counters" in it, because it's uninteresting and doesn't lead to different outcomes everytime, the outcome is always one of two. Antagonists, on the other hand, have no such luxury, and often it isn't feasible to acquire different weapon types when the laser rifle is capable of 3-5 shot critting with an insane fire-rate. There's actually nothing in the uplinks, the game mechanics, etc, that can be regarded as a "hard counter" to security's offense that they can reasonable acquire without armory raiding to deprive them of those means. The current pattern is, if the antagonist isn't doing a wacky peace gimmick, security arms and armors up with the hard counter defense equipment, shoots the antagonist to death with lasers or .45s, security all survives because they take way less damage, and then the round is extended - not that this is always a bad thing, but the way it works now is that anyone who flicks antagonist on has a death wish, and will likely not survive the round if they do anything. May as well not have antagonists if they can all be bowled over like a pile of feathers - but it would be much better to not have every round with antagonists in it actually centered around whether or not security opens the armory.

"Hard-counter one damage type but be weak to everything else" is very coinflippy of a design philosophy, and besides the heavy corporate armor is reasonably competent at dealing with the majority of damage types, at the cost of slowing the wearer down. Replacing the specialized security armor with more suits of heavy corporate armor would simply be a good decision in terms of removing from the armory. Also, additional heavy corporate armor can't be bought from cargo at the moment, I believe. This should change too. If security really needs to gamer, the tactical armor is an even bigger improvement on the heavy corporate armor.

or a3

I'm fairly impressed, in all honesty, and really enjoy Omi as an individual and his characters. He seems responsible enough, so I give this an emphatic +1.

Oh, one more thing; >However, I do not appreciate being ripped, so to speak, by Schev on the server, on multiple occasions, to include the one that led to this ban (a fact I was not aware of until a couple days ago, as I had believed the ban was due to an in-round event). Actually, the ban was technically for an in-round event, but not for the gross AOOC comments I made. I believe I received the earlier mentioned warning for that specific faux pas. The ban was, I believe, unrelated to that incident, it was a separate case where I lost my cool for a completely different reason. Extremely minor clarification but the social telephone game is just really weird with passing along the correct details along sometimes.

Essay/editorial response alert of rantsona proportions, sorry. Arrow: I don't really know what notes you're calling into question in relation to the actual game, because I don't possess that ability to pull all of them up myself like I do for my warnings (I do not pride myself on having a photograph memory, since I don't have one, either). I have a pretty low ratio of warnings-per-year in relation to the actual game, at any rate, with the forums that ratio is ever so slightly higher. Likewise, the function of notes is as a utility to staff members and not as a utility to the player on what to improve on, because that is what warnings are for, from what I've been told by numerous staff members as being policy. I get it, some players - outstanding and amazing examples as they are - receive zero of those, because they play it safe and try not to come into conflict with others - but how common are those people? One might come around out of a hundred different people that log on to play, one that also tries to engage with the community and embed themselves as hard as they can without causing trouble. It's very unrealistic to expect that same ideal standard from every player. And I think the most crucial aspect of the whitelist existing to is not granting it to people who will take the power and abuse it for their own selfish purposes to make other people miserable. And aside from my prior attempts to reapply during my very first year in this community, I have not seriously abused the command whitelist in such a fashion since, knowing the importance of being responsible in-game perhaps above much else. I am definitely not comparable to those with the whitelists who otherwise have immaculate history, bless them, I applaud that they are better at conducting themselves than I am, it is inspiring yet really difficult to reach their standard for someone with a history like me. But if that's the bar expectation, that's really bad for many reasons. So, what's my excuse for being irresponsible and rude from an OOC perspective? None, really. There isn't an excuse. There was some gross personal nonsense on my part going on lately but I am not about to let that be everyone's business ever again. I expect no pity or sympathy for I conducted myself regardless of how hard-hitting events have been for me. What I've resolved for myself is that it will not come to affect anyone such as it already did ever again. In relation to the forum warnings, however, I will say this. There was spacing of almost a half year between my recent warning (a month ago almost exactly), to the warning before that. And another half year between that incident and the one before that in January 2020. And if we want to go even further back, in 2019 and prior was a string of shitty behavior I've otherwise improved from. I'm not excusing any of my past behavior, instead I'm adamant in that I have been doing better in that my attitude slip-ups are even rarer, which at least should be evidence of improvement. And I am aiming to continue doing better. But, I believe you are wrong, if there really was any evidence for the severe accusation that I 'continuously fail(ed) to meet community standards', I would've historically received a hell of a lot more administrative action in relation to the actual server. The keyword being continuously, because I don't think I can be compared to instances where certain individuals have led very orchestrated harassment campaigns against others, or have otherwise repeatedly received tempban after tempban for consistently bad gameplay behavior and then one to two permanent bans once they exhaust the collective staff's patience. I regret each and every one of my failures, even the ones I wasn't punished for, yet I aim to recognize when I do fail and not be a stubborn ass about it when I do inevitably mess up in a particular instance and keep striving to avoid prior mistakes from repeating themselves and causing more harm. Campin: Hollow as it might sound since I can honestly understand why it might be perceived that this is pretty bad-timed for a 'sorry', I am genuinely and utterly apologetic for how I conducted myself in the incident(s) in question. I was quite frankly bitter for absolutely no reason, for specific scenarios that I did not have 360 degree variety of perspectives on, most importantly not having yours on what went on for those specific incidents. I really should've known better than to fall into the trap of absolutism and believing everything I've heard in terms of venting/criticism as fact rather than understanding that when people vent their frustrations in private, it's probably best to take it as a grain of salt except in the most severe cases (that which you are not even close to categorically falling into, frankly). Obviously I did the wrong thing and let that colour my perception of you, and it was very much lacking in grace and dignity for me to actually voice that view that didn't even have the full story in the first place. I would spend another paragraph pedantically analyzing exactly how hurtful it must've been but I'm sure anyone and everyone reading this will be satisfied with "it was wrong for me to act that way, end of story". Knowing that 'sorry' is not enough, I vow not to do that or any of my above mentioned offenses again, and I fully expect to bear the consequence of not keeping a promise like that if I should fail to keep it. I especially understand better to not act in such a hurtful fashion towards others, and it is not just for my own sake. I fully recognize your thoughts and concerns, and consider them all valid. I will not only take them into consideration, I will right those wrongs by not repeating that toxic behavior. I don't expect this long and droning essay to change your mind and I understand if it does not.

I have genuinely tried to get feedback, unfortunately. There seems to be quite a bit of ambivalence on this application.

Looks neat, but could there be any way to make the triage HUD indicators pop a bit more?

I don't find this idea to be particularly compelling, some for the aforementioned reasons already, but I may as well risk repeating others in doing so anyway in order to cover my view on the situation. Firstly, revolvers - relative to existing options - are quite terrible self defense weapons, not to mention equally terrible for long range on top of that, alongside other primary and secondary weapons of their generation compared to those of the existing generation. During the times in which revolvers were manufactured and machined, they were effective sidearms to draw on an opponent in a period where shot capacity was rather limited, and the overall quality of various firearms was extremely terrible due to relative inaccuracy compared to current generation firearms. It was also evident in many cases that drawing a sidearm on an enemy after running out of ammunition for an SLR, bolt-action, or submachinegun in order to continue firing at a target, was simply more effective than trying to reload a self-reloading rifle, bolt-action or submachinegun. It was 'good enough', but definitely not passable enough to be an effective tool for killing as many other primary issued weaponry options at the time of its inception. Compare not only to current date but also to the current status quo: There are many weapons available to traitors with high capacity, high rate of fire, and high hit rate. In a raw sense, the up-front damage is completely irrelevant if you simply pick the tool that permits you to dominate at every effective range in SS13 by landing more bullets than the opposition, which is to say within immediate sight radius. The .45 Thompson pretender submachine-gun is relatively cheap at the moment, but the Adhomian submachinegun can be purchased through cargo, through which I believe does not have a weapon lock on it as it is considered a budget weapon with slightly less rounds and no drum mag TC option. Both these submachineguns in question have reasonable shot capacity, and are quite effective in terms of personal defense and achieving the goals of a saboteur or a mercenary, or whatever. Through this we can infer that outside of engagements where you can fire off all 5 rounds one screen away and hopefully hit all 5, the hunting revolver will be quite useless in all engagements except that which was already mentioned, so therefore as a tool, it is completely useless except outside that very specific and uncommon scenario. And to be in that ideal sweet spot, one requires intentional positioning and to be constantly two steps ahead of security, which is not always a feasible position what with the existence of hallway camera trackers and so on. Security can literally flank you, then commit to an omni-directional push, and then you are dead because you don't have enough bullets for more than one person. We can pretty much conclude in saying that a hunting revolver with a scope will be of very dubious usefulness to any antagonist player aside from IDEALLY killing one person and then immediately getting overwhelmed and pinned by high-capacity projectile or laser weapons. Now, frankly, I am not really of the personality anymore to come up with new ways to goon on security anymore, but in terms of effectiveness, mobility and high capacity, high fire-rate, high hit chance weapons are immediately more valuable, whereas the marksman rifle and the LWAP are extremely limited to their intended engagement ranges, and do not guarantee quick takedowns either. The kind of antagonist playstyle that requires you to sit at a range outside of what is possible to be conventionally engaged from, is ironically neither mechanically nor socially engaging in any fashion. If you really care about 'winning' gunfights with security, I would instead suggest you acquire a ballistic submachinegun and LARP as a trench-runner instead if you want to get cheap frags on security and then immediately duck back into cover to suit some idea of personal fun. You'd also be in range to verbally taunt them before you kill them! Or whatever, really. The current loadout for traitor weapons is quite satisfactory, it is not really guns that are the problem insofar as the current specialized armor sets hard-countering specific damage types rather than being less reliable. But that's a different subject. We have enough weapon variety for the moment, although stationary weapon emplacements would be neat for both sides.