Carver

I really feel like Zavod would fit vastly better with all of these points. Zavod builds most of the ship guns we see and would have the best experience with maintaining and loading them, they're the peak arms dealers in the setting so the hardsuit and exosuit stuff for Machinist fits them like a glove, and finally they fit the role of mining.. slightly better than Orion, I guess, due to their manufacturing focus. Comparatively, the PMCG's all about bodies and muscle, not gunnery and manufacturing. As for anti-corporate, I truly don't quite get what you mean. Orion is the peak of anti-corporate friendly, and the rather hamfisted shoving of the Machinist into Ops means that Orion does cover some skilled labour to a degree. If I ran into an explicitly anti-corporate mercenary I'd be passing them over in favour of one of a million other mercs who I can trust to have less moral issue with their employers. Finally, and this is perhaps my biggest thought, the absolute last thing I want to see is PMCG Miners. Miners acting like mass-murdering badasses because the game's forgiving mechanics let them kill dozens of comically widespread wildlife is already immensely grating. I would thoroughly despise seeing 'Military Miners' being a genuine thing. Furthermore, you are a miner, salvaging is not and should never be the main point of your job, please don't fuck research out of the materials that enable half of their mechanics just so you can go loot a bunch of guns and gear and end up illicitly holding onto a pistol that you'll pull out on the next antag you run into with how trivial it is for miners to steal and conceal salvaged weapons that don't belong to them.

I mostly play Corp Rep these days so I should probably have a lot more to say than I actually do. As far authority goes, I've rarely felt a lack of it when I did ask things of Command, it's usually more often seen that the odd non-command person is overly disrespectful which I've found to be less of a corp rep problem than an excessive anti-corporate problem. In many cases, I suspect that I could simply write an IR and it might see some decent impact, but- writing IRs is fucking annoying and I'm certain will cause some overt OOC dislike from any individuals suffering potential consequences of said IRs (as they are, regardless of intent, generally seen as character complaint-lite). When it comes down to brass tacks, more sway could be useful but in many cases it'd still ultimately circle around to more IRs no matter what you change of it - shitty employees will be shitty regardless of regs and SOP. Ultimately I don't really have much of an opinion for or against codifying a stronger level of sway over said individuals, but I felt that my perspective was worth sharing due to my experience with the role. From all of what's been said here so far, the only thing I'd notably desire is a teensy bit more access, namely just enough to get to the command meeting room. I can't go to said meeting room on the bridge without being let in since the remap, whereas the old bridge arrangement gave access to said room readily to reps and consulars. As for department access, eh, I guess it could have use but I've never felt a pressing need to directly enter departments in any case where I couldn't just ask to be let in (even during emergency I've never seen this sort of request refused).

Note when I mention security, it’s in the context that the act of cyborgification is carried out by Robotics. The ‘execution’ of said act is carried out by either the Roboticist or a Surgeon. Thus my note of adding an important layer to the whole deal.

Cyborgification takes time to prepare and isn’t carried out by security, importantly adding a layer between said department and the authority to directly kill someone who is likely unarmed. Intervention from an outside source is possible with said time.

If anyone can take flags, why couldn’t anyone take stickers of flags?

I would be very worried about codifying impromptu executions. We had them before, and their removal has been solely a net benefit. In any case where a Captain could order this, I would vastly prefer to see a marooning or similar as that gives the individual an opportunity to attempt to escape (and said escape may get them shot down anyways) rather than direct ‘you die now’ orders. At the very best, all I can see this being is another headache for the staff who must investigate when it’s invariably ahelped every time. P.S., don’t get me started on the extremely dangerous and undesirable doors that this would open up during canon rounds.

Maybe Ops to encourage more small orders?

Why should the logistics department suddenly scope creep to steal away one of the RD’s only actually relevant duties?

I’ll merely reiterate my earlier thoughts from my thread on the matter that Engineering fits better. Location, corp selection and so forth. Science is substantially better of a fit than Ops, though, I will concede.

I’m not sure it should be any more accessible given it’s the IPC equivalent of having a cattle bolt gun. As for OMs getting it, OMs aren’t all machinists. RDs ostensibly have more synth sway given they’re entrusted with the AI.

More like necromancy than survival given checkpoint RP has been dead since NBT implementation. Novel enough idea though, would be mildly interested to see if it affected anything in a test merge (wagering not since the stairs are very well traveled and if it slowed down people would get annoyed).

This could work but it could also be super annoying if the crew is bigger than 20-ish people. To an extent, if an antag messes with records you already do this via checking the IDs of people (IDs have prints written on their reverse, these can’t really be tampered with via record fuckery so they’re 100% reliable but depend on the person being present with their original ID - it’s somewhat faster than taking prints from the character directly). When I mained detective I made a point of checking the reverse of IDs of anyone I brought in for fingerprint reasons to be certain I had the right guy. Like I said, I don’t really know if further obfuscation is needed. If an antag or crewman wants to not be found via prints, it’s super duper easy for them to avoid it. Whereas as a detective the rounds aren’t really long enough to thoroughly interrogate more than 1-2 characters as-is after doing your forensic stuff, making that stuff take longer would take away even further from having time to do those longer, engaging interrogations.

I still don’t really know what to think. I said it before but I’d be worried that I’d have a harder time building even a passive camaraderie if the crew was more commonly filled with the oddball/outlier/‘contrarian’ backgrounds if I just wanted to play a more run of the mill character, it can already be hard as-is finding common ground with crew playing a pro-corpo character even though we’re on ostensibly the most corporate ship in the Spur. Further, it doesn’t feel too hard as-is to justify playing an oddball because money is a fairly universal motivator, and we support it with a few amoral hiring backgrounds (Orion, Ringspire, ostensibly the Phalanx, ostensibly NanoTrasen+Nexus as a holdover from the old maps where it was the only player corp, etc. etc.) that take almost anyone. I truly get why you want it theme-wise, I’m just concerned that I’d lose what I enjoy about the current setting. It sounds like as-is lore is already making strides to push the Horizon toward wider event variety with the mention of a Phoron crisis rework/update. And as a complete aside, I do like the map but I have critique with materializing the quarters. The residential deck lets people work a lot, lot more with their imagination in regard to RP and the like - especially for those of us who are funny textRPers. I don’t really see a positive to making it a thing in the round, most of the more slice of life RP you’d want to do in that sort of setting doesn’t benefit from the average round happenings (Greimorians, antags, power loss, whatever have you) and there wouldn’t really be much room to customize your quarters to suit a character. To me, the existing abstraction of the crew deck is its greatest feature.

Truthfully I’m not really sure. People trying to avoid fingerprints can do it super trivially (everyone and their mother has gloves, and there’s another loadout item that can entirely erase prints and maybe fibers if you’re a very thorough criminal) so it’s not like the mechanic is overbearing for antags, and it’s already slowed down by having to collect a scene’s worth of forensic materials and process it all through the machines then organizing it and doing your searching. The rounds just don’t feel long enough to necessitate further obfuscation and slowdown of forensics to me, and stealth isn’t quite as pronounced enough in the average round for it anyways.

I’m not sure how helpful a list would be in slowing down the process given it’s not hard to use logic to eliminate suspects almost immediately. Fibers, access and the like. I could still be given a list of five people and narrow it down to one or two without having to ask a single soul for a statement or alibi quite reliably.

I’m gonna be plainly honest as someone who played detective for like a year straight back in the day, if I can get a partial I can find out who you are with absolutely no problem on my end. Full only makes it easier for the laziest of detectives, but more or less any partial is a 100% certainty if you know what you’re doing.

I want to address the thought of these suggested changes and how they’d interact with backgrounds, crew and camaraderie (points 4-6). Forgive me that I’m on mobile rn so I can’t be particularly eloquent. I would think, if a character in the current setting doesn’t feel camaraderie toward others, why would that change with this new ship? We already go through pretty extreme stuff (mutiny, boardings by the Trinary and Elyra and others, horrible expeditions) that more or less offers the ceiling of what realistically could produce a sense of camaraderie. Leading into the next point, if I’m surrounded by a bunch of felons and other terrible people, why would I feel a greater sense of camaraderie? A lot of these backgrounds are already playable, and tend to heavily grate against each other and the more normal crew. I feel like I’d have a harder time finding common ground with others in the crew playing a normal old fellow when there’s a greater amount of backgrounds that the average person in the Spur would be inclined to heavily dislike. That leads into the next point. If this ship has an easier time hiring any old piece of shit ex-con or what have you, why would it be hard to replace crew? When you have no standards, it’s actually pretty darn easy to find new people, Scalebeard the Pirate isn’t going to care about working on a ship with a shitty reputation when his head is wanted in three systems (extreme example of course, but this applies to the lesser cases like Queenless, Dregs and Guwan as well who don’t have many good work opportunities anyways). I’m not against the idea of a setting change, but I don’t think this independent thing is really adding anything to my crew interactions compared to the present. I really worry that the opposite would happen and my characters would have a lot, lot harder time finding common ground with others. That sort of thing would more than likely push me further away from wanting to play than anything else. At the heart of it, the main reason I play Aurora rn is for the crew interactions.

I fear if it was added then someone in the future would nerf the shit out of it until it's thoroughly obnoxious like PDA batteries have become.

Lore Impact: Small Species: Vaurca Short Description: A controversial form of recruitment incentive for the Ve'katak Phalanx, utilizing VR/Neusim 'facsimiles' of the recruit's deceased friends or family recreated from a combination of public record knowledge and any other source the Phalanx may have access to. How will this be reflected on-station?: It would be an optional background addition to help justify creating non-Vaurcae Phalanx characters, hopefully easing the process for anyone interested in such. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Expands upon the background for non-Vaurcae recruitment, by offering a (debatably) meaningful incentive for these recruits that uniquely involves the Neusim and hopefully enabling more character concepts to have a reason to fit in the Phalanx. Additionally, it would provide a very openly controversial layer of manipulation to the Phalanx's recruitment tactics. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Yes Long Description: The Shades of the Ve'katak, or alternatively, Neusim Facsimiles Shades present a deceptive, debatably cruel form of recruitment incentive; wherein after a non-Vaurcaesian recruit has been interviewed, given a background check and psychological assessment it is determined whether it would be effective to produce a facsimile of one (or rarely, more) of the deceased's friends or family, offered as encouragement to go through whatever lengths may be necessary to pass the entrance tests - including invasive physical augmentation liable to improve the greater quality of the recruit in the end. These facsimiles would be met during the Neusim portion of their training, and may potentially provide significant encouragement for the recruit to stick through their training to the end, whereafter the recruit would still be able to 'visit' their shade during any further training sessions in Neusim - and substantially more rarely, if allowed access for a time to MNeusim. Unfortunately, Shades are not perfect recreations in most cases; typically being produced from a combination of public record of the recruit and the deceased, as well as information gathered during interviews, examinations and background checks. Small details about their form, appearance and personality are often 'off' to an uncanny degree that even the most desperate may need to accept. It has been found that despite this, recruits who have shades are more likely to stick through and pass their Neusim training - in addition to often desiring further training past what is required, even further raising the quality of the now-full member of the Phalanx. The possibility of exposure to the imperfect shade mentally breaking the recruit is, of course, considered a negligible risk for all the benefits the method offers. Furthermore, there is the value in utilizing shades to gather deeper information about the recruit and their history - both to refine the facsimile, and to potentially gain sensitive information on any notable individuals or entities (Corporations, Governments, etc.) with which the individual bears a history with. Ultimately, news may spread of the Ve'katak's members being allowed to 'reunite with the dead', offering a draw to the forlorn who have lost their friends or family in tragedy and war. It is even said that with time, a recruit's memories of the lost and the experiences with their shade often become indistinguishable. Disorganized thoughts, separated for the sake of ease of reading:

Walked away in the middle of a conversation to answer the phone and pet a dog +1

I assumed the idea with those vision categories is that if you wear glasses or have something similar that fixes the problem, it’s treated as a Perfect. If you don’t, whether by inability to rectify the issue or unwillingness then it’d be flawed.

Am I considered an anomaly for being able to go down stairs pretty damned fast? Tripping is annoying, especially when we have the precedent of removing heel tripping for being something that can be avoided with practice.

Assistant alt titles are something I’ve wanted for a while after seeing it on other servers years ago. Big plus for keeping the original title, eliminates any complaints that I could have had.

I agree with this if it's solely adding alt-titles rather than a wholesale shift in role purpose. There are a lot of fun assistant gimmicks to support non-science roles (funnily you could probably just ask to assist Research as a normal Assistant if you develop a bit of IC trust).

I don't mind IPCs having a weakness, but a random IPC off-duty or service role or whoever halfway across the map on an entire other z-level probably shouldn't get dumpstered by EMPs. Even a 'soft bombcap' of having the effect fall-off past the screen radius (even the radius of 2 screens, if it's on the same z-level) of the EMP would be nice, but presently the intensity that you can drain an IPC across the ship is a bit silly - reminiscent, to a degree, of the old death wave or anti-synth artifacts that xenoarch was once able to find.