Carver

Any chance we could regain the lost vending machines somewhere? Some windows in maint too, given Rec was a fantastic avenue for antags to enter/flee the Horizon via the windows? Otherwise, much as I like the old rec area aesthetically, it was sadly rather unused so I won't miss it barring the privacy of the smoking lounge. This remap is nice and maybe will be a good excuse to replace that ugly dance floor in Service with the tree again.

This feels like an assistant gimmick. I don't dislike the thought at all, but I also don't see why this couldn't be done as an assistant.

My issue even with a delay is that nanopaste is an instant heal application - it doesn't take time to reduce the damage, it's a flat -15/-15 with no diminishing returns on something that claims to have 10 uses (though the # on the sprite changes very inconsistently and sometimes doesn't change at all). Further, it can be used by all IPCs regardless of personal ability - most people require visiting a medical doctor in order to receive treatment beyond just stopping bleeding with a bandage and preventing infection with ointment. For lack of machinists I truly wouldn't care if engineers were permitted to do external repairs in their absence - but a multi-use self-heal that is highly effective and requires 0 character skill/knowledge should not be something anyone but antags have access to. If an antagonist highly damages an IPC, they should require someone else to repair them or be stuck with inefficient self-repair using tools - as most others in crew find themselves dependent on medical staff and don't just pop pills in combat.

This suggestion is more or less just for removing the ability to externally repair IPCs and prosthetics with it (including external damage repaired via maintenance hatch). Any other function (internal component/mechanical organ repairs and xenoarch stuff being the only things I can immediately think of) is something that I would hope is left intact. I don't really have any opinion on whether the xenoarch stuff should additionally be reparable via tools, as I doubt nanopaste would be any rarer for a new lack of value as an absurd healing tool.

A simple balance suggestion in the wake of a few recent discussions; Remove all self-healing capabilities of Nanopaste. This would leave it solely a surgical 'tool' used by surgeons and machinists for fixing damaged internal mechanical/synthetic organs/parts within organic crew and IPCs respectively. This would return any external synthetic damage to requiring slow repairs via actual tools. For the 'in exchange' part, return the ability for IPCs to self-heal via actual tools - at a slower action speed than being repaired by another so as to make it unfeasible in an active combat situation. Let antagonists disregard this speed penalty by some measure (Have an uplink purchase called 'IPC Self-Maintenance Kit' with a manual that removes the penalty and a box w/ a couple of cable coils and an industrial welding tool).

BYOND Key: GMR25 Character Names: Constance Marca, Frederick Dayton, Reed Calom, Valeriin Dyrukh'raszyn Species you are applying to play: Vaurca What color do you plan on making your first alien character: (RGB 101, 0, 21) Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question. Why do you wish to play this specific race: To broaden my options as I've been pondering character ideas as of late, and more than a few of these ideas have been dependent on a couple of whitelists that I do not have. To tell the truth, these ideas are mostly my mind 'shotgunning' to see what I find enjoyable - I can't guarantee I'll strongly enjoy a species until I've tried them. On the subject of Vaurcae specifically, I've had more than a few character ideas that only work for Vaurcae and their particular limitations and mentality. Furthermore, what fascinates me the most about Vaurcae are their broods, with their unique specialties and especially the colourfully imaginative worlds each brood's VR paints in one's head. I adore imagining their virtual realms, miniature universes shaping the culture of every brood and the greater hives. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Beyond the most apparent mechanical differences of requiring phoron to survive, possessing access to the hivenet and being reliant on K'ois; their mentality is rather unique for the setting, between their dedication to the betterment of their hive and their Queen's will, and a near-dependence on access to their virtual reality. Their manner of communication via pheromones presents a markedly strong barrier in regard to truly understanding, or being understood by, other species - with only vocal synthesizers to really work with. Among their own, conflict is minimal outside of the politics between the three primary Hives as well as the more recent 'Queenless problem' that the Zo'ra are dealing with - then of course there's Lii'dra, but she hasn't been active in some time. Onto more specific differences, the most marked are present for Ka and Ra; the former wholly averse to situations where violence may even just be a suggestion, and the latter designed to securely remove themselves from such situations. While Za have no such limitations, that does not make them foolish brutes incapable of assessing danger. As for Ta, they are wise enough to know there is nearly never a benefit to putting themselves at any risk of harm. One can't talk about differences without bringing up the potent discrimination all Vaurcae face: mechanically evident by a reduced pay for what is seen as a near-disposable innumerable source of manpower, and the widespread distrust of them preventing from being allowed anywhere near Command. I would mention avowals as a nod to historical barriers in their career as well. Furthermore they have a coloured history with Mendell City in particular that paints their image poorly to many an urban Bieselite, owing to the poor state of Flagsdale and the surgent crime committed by Queenless gangs. No other species faces the same disdain, disgust and distrust as Vaurca do. Character Name: Ka'Akaix'Amox Zo'ra, Curator Please provide a short backstory for this character Hatched in the human year of 2459 and bearing no prior memories, Amox is an unbound Type A Vaurca designed to serve as an archivist of Zoleth'akeh, spending it's initial few years of life almost solely in VR tending to Zoleth's vast records. Yet, in the wake of the 35th Battlefleet's invasion in 2462 where it was tasked with recording new battles with a wholly alien force; it found a new fascination in the contemporary study and translation of the wealth of knowledge present in the martial histories, faiths and mythologies of other species. It now seeks to gather notable texts and records that may be of value to furthering Zoleth's interests in both warlike and spiritual matters, hoping to translate such valuable works into a virtual form more readily consumable by Vaurcae. Though it's work contrasts with Athvur's 'library' of human knowledge, as Amox seeks to translate and record only what it views as practical histories and texts bearing potential relevance to Zoleth's brood and the greater hive Zo'ra. In pursuit of this goal it has sought assignment aboard the SCCV Horizon, both seeking exposure to the myriad of libraries, archives and museums of alien worlds as well as the living history that may best be experienced by the one-of-a-kind exploratory vessel. This work so far has brought forth many obstacles, expected and unexpected. It has had to dedicate time toward improving it's mastery of written Basic, in order to fully understand the alien works it seeks to study. Yet this makes reading said works no easier, as it has encountered the uniquely Vaurcaesian obstacle of requiring finely controlled lighting to comfortably read printed text without ocular strain over an extended period. Such work brings an expected, yet ever uncomfortable mental fatigue due to the separation from Zoleth's realm demanded by long periods of research - with Amox choosing to read most texts within a single sitting, in order to then spend the downtime pondering over the worth of what was read. What do you like about this character? I simply enjoy the idea of an alien mind trying to gather meaning and insight from books, encountering obstacles truly unique to a Vaurca as it processes the histories and seeming absurdities of these foreign works and the cultures that birthed them, then exploring it's own perspective on these individual works. I wanted to try and create a character for an uncommon, rather unorthodox role and see how the pieces could fit together aboard the Horizon. On a further note, I enjoy the challenge of trying to write a Zo'rane service character from a brood that isn't Athvur without compromising the greater identity of the brood. How would you rate your role-playing ability? On a motivated day I'd say 7/10, if I'm feeling strongly inspired maybe 8+/10. I generally try to only play when I'm motivated, though this occasionally fades if I lose track of the idea I had going into a round. Notes: I'm never going to perfectly remember when to use Vaurca or Vaurcae, since my brain was trained on not using the e. I suspect I already misused one or the other in this very application despite thoroughly trolling my answers for such errors. My brain crinkled in on itself trying to discern which was correct for the application title, as I'm still unsure if I fumbled the title.

My concern with making the Old/Pre-FR accent less restricted would be potentially running into the 'HMR Issue' where it's concerningly overused. As it stands, you have to strongly justify a character to have it - and I think rare accents with a strong lore tie-in are interesting! But I do also like the idea of a separate, new/imitation accent for younger nobility - and think that should be the more common/widespread option.

Please make it obvious to new players that they don't actually do anything.

Bonus points you can circumvent the locks with an e-mag.

I was terrified until you mentioned firing pins. Interesting idea, but I'd need to see a test merge to really have any significant opinion on this.

The ability to wear armour safely in space with a cooler is very, very frightening in the hands of Security - when the traditional counter to specialized armour was forcing security to fight in a vacuum outside of their home turf. I'd agree with punishing the bad players if not that the very nature of a G2 Officer existing in Security means you may as well entirely avoid fighting sec as an antag unless you want to hard invest into killing a singular IPC (supported by humans, or worse, unathi) who will just inhale some nanopaste if you don't kill them with fat burst damage. Truthfully, I'd be fine if Industrials were left in exactly one role, Investigator. This role is never expected to fight outside of defensive situations and it's frowned upon to prioritize equipping an Investigator over an Officer, or playing a frontline-happy Investigator.

This would be a wonderful argument if I didn't also agree that Dionae should be removed from security. There's precedent for removing balance-shattering synthetic frames from Security, but IPCs at a baseline (no pun intended) vastly impact the balance of combat - it is simply that the Industrials with particular regard to the Hephaestus Generation models are absolutely disgusting with it. Every other model of synthetic can be killed without needing ions or the recoilless rifle (which STILL isn't nearly as good at it as the PEAC, mind you), and lasers are a non-factor when the department has ablatives. It's simply time for the industrials to go, let their broken nature be relegated to antagonists who aren't backed by an entire armoury and station of supporting personnel.

Truthfully I would extend this to all industrial models (which further includes Xion) in order to make it a cleaner change. But yes, I fully agree that the equivalent of a walking forklift is not remotely balanced at all within Security - it astounds me that the PEAC was buffed immensely against synthetics while the Recoilless Rifle did not receive nearly as strong of a parity buff, when Security G2s are far more oppressive in gameplay than antagonist G2s. These have always felt more oppressive than even mobility frames had in their time.

Just make the expedition shotguns recharge more than 1 diffused laser projectile at a time and they're immediately vastly better.

With the first season of the Walking Dead, Rick was entirely safe inside of the tank. Entirely surrounded, but safe. That's not really overcoming a tank because if it had fuel (or if Rick knew how to drive it) it could just run them over and nothing could particularly stop it.

Seems like a policy suggestion but I'm not against it since half of the fun of NBT is visiting places like Adhomai. But, after a moment of thought, this should be rescinded if the alert raises about Green in any way.

I like these suggested changes, especially if everything leaves room for optimization if an Engineer wishes to finely adjust them.

Reasonable changes, though I agree that transformation still shouldn't be a quick affair. I don't know what movies you've been watching where they beat tanks, lol. Every zombie film, show and game I've seen - sitting in a tank is the safe option but you'll just be surrounded and eventually starve to death if you're out of fuel. As for clawing, maybe if it's ONLY for attacking IPCs - but they should never be 'robusting' a human, it goes against the point of an infection mode.

Echoing the above, I had asked Alb if it would be possible to see maybe a burial urn and one of the sets of ancient Adhomian armour in there. Some stuff that's flavourful and cool, and could reasonably be kept on the ship instead of being sent off immediately - while having decent possibilities for antag motivation (seeing as they're treasures taken via graverobbing, with ties to the Raskariim). I hope such a thing would be possible, it'd be a neat addition!

Please don't map the shuttles with flaps in the future, seeing a flap delete a tank rocket was depressing. As for what I observed, I wish some of the more careless and suicidal crew who went off alone with firearms were punished by the Geist. Some had seemed entirely ignored (an officer abandoned the group to chase after a Geist alone for 3+ minutes and was never ambushed), which was disappointing and just seems to encourage really overly aggressive and careless play. For the map itself, I loved the caves and especially how winding and mazelike they were. I truly hope there's a way to download this map for singleplayer exploration, as it's possibly the most atmospheric event map we've had so far. Please also keep that wonderful 'Masonry' material that the walls used, their texture was beautiful.

I'm not sure Operations needs it, it's already a huge target by virtue of the cargo shuttle and I often see group antags holding up there. Placing it somewhere public that isn't already relevant might help shift the general flow of 'antag traffic' round-to-round, perhaps the Research Hallway?

I somewhat preferred how the old vaults (and current scuttling device) were out in the hallway since it means if there was a robbery it was a very public ordeal. Shoving it in Operations feels quite odd given that a majority of the department would be brigged for even daring to think of going in there, so it seems liable to be as forgotten as the phoron stores currently are.

I like this idea, more tie-ins to old lore arcs are always super cool - and a safe is a good way to include them without making them especially 'in-your-face'. In general I think a vault should only contain monetarily valuable and lore valuable stuff.

I more or less summed up my view; If you're readying for a crew role, you should be committing to that crew role whether or not you roll antagonist. A feature that encourages the kind of people who presently leave if they don't successfully roll for antagonist is something I fundamentally disagree with.

My assumption is if someone readies for a role, they intend on committing to playing that role no matter if they roll antag or not. There is no point to showing who's readied for a crew role if such readies are misleading 'ghost readies' that disappear when that person doesn't get the antag role they want - I have as much disdain for this as I do for people who'll cryo if they don't get an antag role.