Sparky_hotdog

BYOND Key: Sparky_hotdog Character Names: Erina Shen, Torrent, Elise Miravic (These are those I currently play) Species you are applying to play: Vaurca What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Brownish-Red? (131, 41, 11, Athvur's unbound colour) 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: I'll be honest, for the longest time I didn't have much interest in Vaurca, seeing them as just the weird bug race of the server. Then about a year ago maybe I interacted with a few in game in short succession, and something dawned on me. By their very nature, Vaurca are specialised at one thing; They have their jobs and they do them well. However, while a Human might develop these skills over the course of their whole life, building and growing their perception of the world as they do so, Vaurca learn in VR, and because of such are somewhat juvenile and innocent when it come to general life things. This not only makes them very different from every race on board, but makes them both fascinating as a concept, and usually highly adorable. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: I won't reiterate my point about their innocent nature here, but I think that's a key part. They are also very social creatures, as it is written into their biology; They are loyal to their Hive, Brood and fellow Vaurca, and while not biological, I think this does lead to them naturally being more loyal to other people and groups as well. Additionally, they are one of the most excluded races in the Spur, bar maybe synthetics (but it's pretty close honestly), which always alters the dynamic when it comes to interacting with other species. Character Name: Za'Akaix'Syx Zo'ra Please provide a short backstory for this character: Za’Akaix’Syx Zo’ra, more commonly referred to by their identifier, Syx, was created by Athvur’s brood in 2460 in the aftermath of the Lii’dra invasion of Tau Ceti. They were formed to bolster the ranks of Vaurca in Tau Ceti Foreign Legion. As might be expected of one of Athvur’s brood, they were not created as an efficient fighter, but rather as a medic and protector to keep their fellow legionaires alive. In their time in the VR realm of Athvur, Syx trained diligently in medicine for their future role, while also spending time studying Human culture and society to better allow them to integrate into the TCFL when the time came. When they did first step foot outside of Athvur’s realm and join the TCFL, Syx performed diligently in the field, and being a social creature by nature, found they enjoyed the comradery they had with their teammates. This was also the first experience with the other broods Syx would have, and as one might predict, they very quickly became familiar with the brood of Zoleth in particular, even entering her Realm to take part in team bloodsports with some of her warriors. Syx’s Ta' attitude towards having her Vaurca deployed as part of the Foreign Legion soured with the announcement of the Peacekeeper Mandate, and she began considering sending her Brood into the reserves, looking elsewhere to send them. Nexus Corporate Security reached out, offering a chance to send one of her Vaurca to the SCCV Horizon as a First Responder, for which Syx was chosen. They see this as a great honour, and a chance to learn about new cultures beyond Tau Ceti. What do you like about this character?: I'm a stickler for characters who fight (in this case non-literally) not to injure, but to protect, and Syx is not just someone who has chosen that life, but who was created to live that life, and being from Athvur's brood would allow me to play into the juvenile curiosity I love about the species so much. How would you rate your role-playing ability?: 6-7.5, depending on the day. Notes:

I strongly agree with removing engi and med borgs from the default selection for the reasons others have covered above. If there's an emergency and the ship needs one, having a machinist be able to allow them seems fine. I still maintain that being more lenient with cyborgs on low pop because there's less people, for the lack of a better term, feels wrong. We have a lot of really cool lore for people to explore and make normal characters with, and discouraging folks from that seems wrong. I've no problem with someone making a cyborg if they want to play a cyborg, but giving extra slots or modules because there's no engineers feels like you're asking players to make a cyborg just to set up the engine. Idk, maybe that's just me. Access totally makes sense to remove. It is one of the ways that every borg is superior to their crew counterparts, and honestly I can't think of a genuine reason for them to have complete access to the ship, other than it being the status quo. I don't think you ever need to give a cyborg all access; If the situation is that dire there's probably other people you can give it to. I'm not a fan of "If missing X job, have work around for Y job", particularly if the first job has fairly few responsibilities. Removing part of the machinist's job in an emergency disregards the value of the machinist imo. Setting aside whether whitelists necessarily work for the role this is suggesting, the process for these whitelists just isn't compatible with borg: AI whitelists are in my eyes quite a large application (requiring an interview) which seems over the top for borg; Synthetic whitelists meanwhile are centred around IPC lore and your understanding of that, and would involve asking any new borg or IPC players to go through the bother of applying for both even if they have no intention of using one or the other. Hard no here. Adding more laws just complicates the law set a little more, and this is a pretty grey area to operate in anyway. As much as I hate to say it, this would be better enforced with OOC policy or just simple courtesy (Don't nick other people's jobs). Medical's a good (Though not perfect) example of just expecting people to stay in their lane.

I'm firstly going to preface this by saying I was playing my Sec Officer for this, as I suspect that will influence things. Personally, I loved this. The ship combat was exciting OOCly and fun to RP. The chaos was just measured enough to add spice whilst not feeling totally out of control. While this wasn't planned by the event staff, command did an excellent job of communicating the right amount of information to the crew too imo. The ship combat also, to my eyes as a third party, kept a lot of the crew engaged with the round too. Engineering obviously had their hands full, Medical were dealing with wounded from the cruiser's barrages, command and the bridge were focused on sending out barrages of our own, operations was keeping everyone supplied (particularly the guns). Even research were getting involved I believe by handing out gear to departments to help. This was something I sorely underestimated the effect of, and am very happy to have done so. As the keen observer may have noted, I missed security of my list of engaged departments despite playing there myself, and for good reason. There was no boarding action during the event, which meant ISD largely had nothing to do. I think having us ICly act out as if we were expecting one was the right call (This was a simulation/test after all, and it gave us something to do), even if command (and eventually us) OOCly knew this wasn't going to happen. I also wholeheartedly agree this was the right call on an event planning side: This event was to test ship combat. We did that, and I'd say it was a success. The reason I still enjoyed this as security is because the mere idea of the ship being in combat was enough to prompt interesting RP, and while I was sceptical when I first saw how many parts of combat involved throwing the crew about, I can now say that it is somehow super fun to be thrown against the walls while trying to get around. I am definitely looking forward to the first time we have real boarding during ship-ship, but I am in no way regretful we didn't get any for this Finally, service was also missing from that list, which I don't think is surprising: It takes a very specific type of event to involved them, and in this case a (un)lucky blow to the fore of the ship made their whole department inoperable for the rest of the round. I have no idea what the round was like for anyone playing that, but would be interested in seeing. Overall, a very very fun event.

Part of the issue stems from the fact that shipbounds are absolutely ancient, and have always felt shoehorned into the lore imo. The exact details about what makes something a robot vs an android isn't set out anywhere to my knowledge, but as I understand, Robots are purely instruction based; They follow their laws and do very little else. Androids on the other hand may have more of a personality, but are still held to laws. In other words shipbounds are at best IPCs with more mechanics and less personality. The argument that they are useful on low pop rounds still somewhat confuses me. Sure, when the engine hasn't been set up I am very happy when a shipbound activates to fix power, but that's no different from if an engineer wakes up. The only difference is that shipbounds, whether you agree with my above point or not, are often not treated as characters in practice (Key word, often. There are some exceptions), which seems an odd thing to promote on low pop. 2 hours without power sucks. 2 hours without another character to talk to sucks more imo.

I think right now techno only rolls for below 15 folk, and for good reason; As an antag, they just cannot deal with large rounds. This is what has lead to the recent PR to remove visitors as well. I do however think you have a point regarding the frequency of rolls. This is due to the fact that most rounds in a day are low pop, and thus the vast majority of the secret rounds we see are a techno/traitor/vamp/extended roll. My general perception is that people are happier to ready for off ship antags, so techno is far more likely to come up. And if you play any mode two or three times a day, nearly every day of the week, it starts to feel pretty stale, especially when it is admittedly as limited as techo. Overall, I have to agree in that Wizard, for all its frustrating shenanigans and bordering lrp gimmicks, felt like a more complete gamemode. You didn't know pretty exactly how the round was going to shake out the second you worked out there was one on board. While I personally am an advocate for less magic antags, and the tech side of techno feels more grounded in the setting, I still can't help but agree that techno feels like a more bland mode.

So I figured I'd give my thoughts on the event, having slept on it. I'll start with the bad, because as per usual there's less of it than people make out, and I would like to finish on the good. Firstly, while I understand the sentiment of "You weren't supposed to fight, but it was an option", I think it's fairly clear there was a miscommunication somewhere. Most of us read the event details and saw "High Intensity", so were expecting a firefight. I believe (And this might have been my tired brain last night making shite up) several of those involved in the planning of the event mentioned on Discord they were surprised things went so peacefully. Which is fine. It shows the choice is there, which I suppose is good. But how on Earth did anyone expect the Horizon to resist? If you scale the scenario down to something that might happen on a regular round, say a traitor holding a gun to an unarmed crewmember's head, there would be no expectation said crewmember would fight back. Setting aside some more unique cases, it would hardly be in character to try and do anything but comply. That is basically what happened to the Horizon. I'm not complaining that we had to do things peaceful (As we didn't have to, nor should every event just be a firefight) but I think more care should be taken in how "Intense" a round is likely to be in future. My only other real complaint comes down to something that ultimately comes up in every event, but to my eyes more so in this one; Getting the whole ship engaged. Admittedly at least by having this one take place aboard the Horizon there was more stuff for everyone to do, but this felt very command focused. Clearly command are going to have an important role in any remotely tense event, but even as someone playing security I felt rather out of the loop, and was basically unaware of what the FSF wanted or why they had locked weapons until they had nearly left. Sure, this might be as a result of the decision to comply with the FSF's demands, but as above, more planning should maybe have been given to the idea that the Horizon wouldn't try to fight the Carravagio. Maybe that was just me, however, and others caught on quicker. Regarding what I think was done well, I do think the continuation of the events on the Odyssey was well done and made sense to me, at least once I had gathered what actually occurred. The crew of the Carravagio actually make very good antagonists in my mind, with their reasoning being that which can logically explained and yet seeming entirely bullshit ICly. I literally went to bed last night fuming at the audacity of these pixel space marines. I commend everyone who took part in making me feel such. I don't know if they are likely to be involved in any future events, but something about their repeated involvement with the ship made the whole situation feel more personal, sentimental and closer to home, which is a nice change from galaxy spanning politics. Overall, it was a fun event, and achieved something which I feel should be the goal of all events; It put the crew in a situation they would never experience in a normal round.

I'll drop my two cents on the issue. As far as I can see, the surgeon/physician debate that has existed for as long as I've been active on Aurora (Now 2+ years) stems from a mechanical issue, no matter how much we talk about it as being an IC or RP issue. Fundamentally, the medical system as is doesn't have enough complexity to it to justify the level of stratification we have tried to have for so long. This isn't a complaint about the system btw, as while I've pondered how to change it to fix this issue, medical is already viewed by most (I believe) as one of the most complex departments, and it doesn't need to be any more so. But as it stands physician is just a jack of all trades role which offers very little to a department which thrives on niches. In my observation, there just aren't enough cases staying in the GTR/ICU to justify physician as is. I'm not going to say that this is a perfect solution to the complaints of physician players, but we've spent the last 2 and a half years (Or however long it's been since the surgeon split) juggling permissions, access and surgery charts, with very little effect. Things are slightly better than it was when I started playing medical a year ago, but they're still a long way from being settled. And thus I think this is a valid attempt at trying a new approach. Maybe it won't work; That's what test merges are for. On this note, I feel this is a rather cynical view of the department. I'd rather trust the player base to be respectful, rather than have an entire role dedicated to expecting the worst of people.

Basically what everyone else has said. Like Gecko I've no clue how to balance this, but I'm a massive fan of breadth in antag roles, so the idea of what is essentially the widest possible antags is definitely a +1 from me too. Only thing which I've no clue about how it would work is antags like cult and revolutionary which rely on others being on their team. Obviously AOOC coordination is possible, but might not be reliable enough.

So personally I'm not a huge fan of the Veil as a concept as it suffers from the same issue the Wizard Federation did when Wizards were still a thing; It only exists inside of select rounds (cult and vamp atm), which I don't think makes it particularly engaging for roleplay. However, that detail wouldn't make or break this idea for me. Other than that, this sounds great, for a number of reasons. You've already highlighted the similarities in the gameplay loops of both these antags, and I also feel this could make higher pop ling/vamp rounds more fun, as two different antags with different kits always seems to make rounds more exciting (Hence why autotraitor is still one of the most beloved round types). I'm also a fan of broader options for any one antag type, as it allows for more gimmick potential. The only suggestion here I'd have worries about is this, as it sounds fairly permadeath-y, and unless something changes this Seeker would likely still need to do some early feeding. It's not impossible to deal with (Assuming this is supposed to be a loud option, could always have early on feeding tear of a limb maybe? Rather than outright killing someone) but something that popped into my head.

Ditto this. In fact one of the things I really liked about the event was that it was off ship, for a multitude of reasons. By not having the event take place in the same place with the same stuff as any other round, the crew have to adapt quickly on their feet. While I ended up cryoing fairly early on, as a member of security I was pleasantly surprised at the opportunity to use something other than the standard laser rifle/carbine combo we typically have in the armoury. However, I can't speak for how other players or departments found the lack of equipment, obviously. I do feel there was an oversight on an IC level regarding why the crew were there. It was supposedly shore leave, yet there was only really one place for relaxing crew to go (the bar, which got way too crowded very fast) and even that (I believe) required a member of the crew to man. I understand that event volunteers are limited, but I do think future shore leave events could benefit from a few volunteers playing the crew of wherever we've docked with, and with there being more for crew to do with their time off. Failing that, there should be something for everyone to do relating to their jobs. And while it has been mentioned before many many times that basically every event has the issue of not involving non-command/security characters, at least most events on the Horizon allow folks to carry on with their business. Engineering still do their normal set up, science can still do science, etc. Again I like the event not being on the Horizon, but even on extended rounds folks like doing their jobs rather than 2 hours of constant small talk RP, and the same can probably be assumed for events like this. That or just make everyone be off duty crew (which would make a lot more IC sense to me) Also ditto this. Given I believe the Odyssey was some kind of SCC/NT/Biesel fuelling station, it wouldn't be unreasonable that the station is a standard design, so the map could have been designed to be reused in future events, under different names. Obviously mapping is still hard regardless of whether the map is throwaway or not, but making a new one-and-done map every few events seems far more impractical to me than building a few decent reusable ones.

To start off with, I don't think the fast pacing was necessarily as negative as you make it out to be. The rapid release of news kept me hooked early, and I think it's easier to get into an arc with three or four, small articles released over a few days than just one or two big ones released further apart. However, I do agree that it was hard to RP much around the situation, with how back to back the articles were, and it did remove a fair amount of tension. I think the biggest example of that was the Skrell intervening militarily. I'd saw the idea thrown out a little both ICly and OOCly before the article dropped, and then just... it happened, about a day after, which did sorta kill the suspense. As an extra point, while interest might have faded towards the tail end of the arc, iirc the SLZ vs TP arc was happening in tandem with this one, and that might have stolen some attention due to being closer to home. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it made the news feel more alive and active, but possibly cost some focus on this arc specifically. I do also agree with Cybs and Danse that while an arc finally addressing the Wildlands was greatly appreciated, the way the Wildlands were handled was a little lackluster. The fact that for me the SFA were a faction I read about a year ago or so, thought "Hey look, there's a bandit kingdom in the Wildlands. That's a neat idea." and then... nothing? All the way up until they got wiped out. And then the SPG and SSMD doing... very little other than clean up also kinda felt... again, lackluster. Going back to the pacing, a longer middle of the arc, where the Federation, SPG and SSMD invaded the SFA would have probably been more interesting in my eyes. I mean, the 35th invading Tau Ceti took what? A fortnight if I recall? And in a few days the entire Fleet Administration collapsed? And on the note of the Federation once again butting its head into the rest of the Spur's business with violence, it didn't initially occur to me, but after it was mentioned above and I considered it, it's a good point. I don't have a particularly informed opinion on this point, Skrell lore is one of the areas I know the least about, but I think its something to keep in mind for the future. A nation as strong as the Federation should be able to influence the rest of the Spur without blowing anything up for once. Overall, the arc did feel like it finally got galactic politics moving again, as at least to me things have felt fairly inactive on that scale after KotW, with more local lore developments. I felt at the very least it was engaging and interesting to watch unfold.

So Boggle's idea is interesting to me. I like these being part of every round (I assume that was the intention), because it would make it a little less jarring and with some of the more casual ones would make them kinda optional. As he's pointed out, it would also particularly aid the departments that on extended become nothing more than chair RP. I have nothing against chair RP, but when I only play a round a day, and that round ends up being extended every day for a week, I start to miss the entire reason I ready up as an FR rather than a visitor. Having an extra thing for antags to potentially tie themselves into is also a fun addition. Gimmicks are hard to come up with, so being able to go "Oh, I'm a traitor and there's a delegation here today? I know what I'll do." or "Oh, we're Mercs and the Horizon is transporting a super secret cargo thing? We're going to steal it." would be nice. However, I can see the argument, as has been suggested above, that at least some of these could "get in the way of RP". If you're playing security and a delegation arrives on the ship, you're going to be expected to guard it, regardless of whether it's extended or not. The first solution to this would be to make these more intensive options rarer, so most rounds it's just "Get phoron" or "Chart planets" which doesn't take up too much time or effort, but can guide people with nothing else to do, with the more "Make sure this box makes it to X place safely" tasks being rarer. And the second solution would be to, and this is going to sound mean, just suck it up. Like, who said RP had to be a perfect, non-interrupted conversation? If you're playing an engineer, chatting with a friend at the bar, personally I think there's some good conflict added by "Oh sorry mate, we just reached a planet and I've got to go help build an outpost down there." Did that interrupt your RP? Hell yeah it did. Is is a canon thing that can change that relationship in a way not really possible right not? Also hell yeah. Maybe I'm rambling and missing the point here, but personally I think seeing interruptions as negative to RP is wrong, otherwise we wouldn't have random events like carp.

The bridge could do with a regular holopad as well. It could go anywhere really, but as is you have to wander pretty far if you want to use one to link anywhere else on the Horizon. They aren't used loads, but I've seen a few instances where it's come up.

I'll throw my +1 in here, because man does WAYRT deserve it. Malcom is often the most authoritative figures on the station, regardless of how many actual command members there are, and yet he demands respect respectfully. Sure, nobody likes being harassed for bounties, but he never does it in a that makes you hate him, just the task, which is a very careful line to tread. I've interacted less with Oliver during his trial, so I can't comment much there, but from a few passing conversations he seems fairly good at his job. Also, the fact that WAYRT plays during Europe hours (aka dead/low pop) does mean that his command is sorely needed when he's around, as that one person who can get access to areas nobody else can in an emergency can often make empty rounds a little more bearable. However, I would say this might have impacted his app a bit, as a) When you only play rounds with the same 5 other players, you're going to be more limited in the amount of feedback you can get, and b) These rounds are mostly extended, and if not they're going to be an antag like techno or traitor, which does mean there's less opportunities for WAYRT to prove their ability under pressure compared to a player during high pop who gets a couple of merc rounds in. Not sure if that's relevant, but it was a thought that came to me.

Personally I really like the IAC, for the reasons highlighted above. They're pretty unrefutably good guys, which is refreshing in a universe of shady grey figures. The Aurora universe is clearly not supposed to be a happy place, but having those dorky light blue uniforms act as a simple, universally understood light in the dark only serves to make the shadows stick out more. So I would greatly like to see the IAC expanded upon, or at the very least used and discussed more in relevant lore. Me rambling on a bit about the IAC As for the Luna Convention, it's... yeah, it's old. It's old and at this point basically broken by every sovereign state in the Spur. Maybe that's the point, but eh... it's kind of just something that's there in the lore. Maybe if, in the wake of recent events, the IAC were to push for a new convention to be signed by the galactic community, that would be interesting. Give the IAC some spotlight, keep the Luna one as a sort of IC reminder of a failed attempt. Just spit balling at the end here.

Part of the issue, as has been raised above, does stem from the fact that physician is ultimately a role that has every single part of its responsibility overlapped by another role in the department. Sure, having someone to deal with the GTR is useful, but most rounds (at least at the times I play on, where we probably see peak 25 people playing) a surgeon, 2 FRs and a chemist can literally take anything the round throws at them. The issue then stems from physician burn out, which personally I have experienced, and have noticed myself (no matter how hard I try) also contributing to now that I play FR. Ultimately we get so used to managing without physicians, because we can and because there aren't all that many of them, that by instinct we often take away most of their gameplay and RP opportunities. As a responder, if I can't treat someone with whatever meds are on my belt at the scene, chances are they need emergency surgery, in which case they're gonna get whipped right past the physician into a surgeon's hands to plug that arterial or burst lung. Thus, physicians either give up on medical or switch to playing one of the other roles in the department with a more defined niche. And the whole thing repeats in one vicious, vicious cycle. Do I have a solution to this? Not really. Most vicious cycles can be solved with critical masses, but I'm not sure that's going to help much. Ultimately as long as low pop exists (and it always will) people will play solo med. And as long as solo med exists, physicians will be the least appreciated role, because almost anyone can do their job in their place. And as long as physicians are the least appreciated role, the more people will get used to filling in for them.

Oh boy! Is this a thread about surgeons! Get ready for a long one (I will put a tl;dr at the bottom if I remember). So I'm going to be blunt in saying I dislike super doctors. Personally, I find the whole "I can cure all ailments" thing to be a little lacklustre, given my favourite medical moments have come from the department working well together, rather than just individually treating whichever patients get handed over to us. This is why I have particularly enjoyed switching over to FR recently, as my role in the chain of treatment feels a little more secure than when I played physician. So naturally, I have a distaste for the surgeon role entirely. It is inherently a super doctor role, and while I greatly appreciate all those surgeons who do a good job of avoiding that by staying out of the GTR when there's a physician working, they are fundamentally "physicians but better" as there's not really a way to justify a character that can perform brain surgery but doesn't know how to use butazoline. However, similarly, through removing surgeon and just making all physicians (or whatever their title may be) able to do every surgery, you just shift the super doctor to another role, this time with no reason to do any form of delegation without a CMO (And even then, they might not deem it a good idea). Alt-titles sound like a good idea to fix this, giving people specialisations, but ultimately there's the risk (albeit a low one) that you end up with all non-surgery spec characters filling up the department, or just the entire department filled with whatever the surgeon equivalent title is. So I don't think that's a good idea. For the love of god don't give the surgical slots to the intern role. As someone who spent way too long playing a resident back in the day because I thought (in hindsight stupidly) that you should play that character for an entire 2 year residency, adding more slots just sounds like we're encouraging people to make characters more permanent in their learning roles, which isn't the purpose of those jobs imho. Adding a nurse or other such role instead to be a less skilled role in leu of this option making physicians super doctors again sounds good on paper, until you realise that's just having 2 physicians and 4 surgeons with different names. The 'attending physician' (As much as I think that name could use some work) doesn't actually sound like that bad of an idea. Sorta like a warden, but for medbay. Having two of them might be a bit much (in which case give physician the spare slot I guess), or it might actually work well as the CMO delegating "AP one, you manage physician X and Y in the GTR, AP two, you manage physician A and B in surgery", and then the AP's subdelegating. I'm not sure how it would swing, but it sounds like the most likely to not cause headaches, though it might take some getting used to. A few things on the side that don't really fit anywhere else: Specialisations being in records is definitely the way to go. Alt-titles are often just clutter on the manifest that confuse people. If physicians are given all of surgery, any physician should be able to do all of surgery, regardless of whether they specialise in it (For the sake of that sec officer who broke every bone in his body), and it should be up to characters to ICly delegate beyond that. The super doctor thing being handled by admins on a case by case basis as you mention sounds like a good idea, but I'm honestly not sure how easy that is to spot. Is a surgical specialist treating someone with burns on low pop "super doctoring"? Arguably. Does it deserve a bwoink? Probably not. What about on a higher pop round? Is their character just an asshole with no respect for their lane, or is it the player being non-cooperative? If the table goes (And by golly gosh I hope it does), as a point someone should include the whopping two "surgeries" we FRs can do on the wiki page elsewhere. They don't come up often, but being able to cut someone out of their hardsuit or chop off a necrotic limb can be huge when you're solo med. Maybe adding some uniform items (sleeve patches, armbands, etc.) that do a rough job of being like "Hey! I'd like to do surgery", or "Please, don't put me in an OR!" could be a shout if we go down the 'Physicians do everything' route, as there isn't always a CMO to check records, and if we go down the AP route as well, they may or may not check them. Also, not everyone writes records, so we've got to be considerate or something. As promised, tl;dr I think the attending physician idea is the best option for allowing IC delegation of tasks.

So I was one of the FRs this round, and the main thing I can think of was what was the transfer rate you were using? I don't know what the ideal rate is, but if we can pump blood into someone in a minute and raise their blood oxy by 40% or whatever, I'm fairly certain siphoning at max speed would do the same in reverse (Hence brain damage). Tomorrow when I'm less tired I'll do some tests on a private server, see what I find. I don't think it should work any differently than it did around a year and a half ago when I distinctly remember a mini blood drive for a Dionae event, with zero brain damage cases as I recall there.

Upon reading your initial post I wasn't wholly convinced by what I was reading, however, having read your responses to Triogenix's questions, I am happy to say I have change my mind. So consider this a +1, if that's a thing for these kinds of apps. That aside, I do have a couple of questions of my own: 1) You mention, in my opinion quite rightly, a lot of praise for how the SLZ vs TP arc managed to get people involved with both sides of the central conflict of that arc. What parts of that arc would you look to take inspiration from in future to try and create more, similarly engaging stories? 2) You've also discussed both places where synthetics are integrated into another society (NHP, Europa, Xanu were all in your google doc at the top), while also talking about the lack of development for more synthcentric locations (Orepit, D14). Which of these categories do you feel needs the most urgent development in the lore?

So over the last two weekends I've played between 8 and 10 rounds of Bridge Crew (I can't remember exactly). I thought I'd quickly share how that experience has compared to the expected responsibilities mentioned above. First of all, when it comes to coordinating with command, I've seen none of this. Maybe this is an adjustment thing, with command not being used to having up to three extra people on their comms they can get to assist them, but for the most part the fact we share command comms has often felt like a burden, rather than a privilege. If there is any kind of situation going on, it's often been my understanding that we're meant to stay quiet and let actual command deal with it. Personally I consider manning most of the bridge consoles to come with the pilot part of the job. The bridge has 5 consoles, one of which is the messaging server one (Which I have no idea how to work.), three of which are for flying the Horizon (Piloting), and the last of which is the main command console. And sure, the BC have access to use the announcements, and I'm guessing from what I've seen above the code changing program too, but most of the time I and others treated these as emergency permissions, once again letting actual command use these instead. Being in charge of the bridge sounds like an appropriate and big responsibility, until you consider who or what are they supposed to be in charge of? They are the lowest ranking crew with access to the bridge, and I've given my thoughts on the consoles already. When it comes to leading expeditions, I might be missing something that is actually defined as an expedition, but while the few times I've ferried science to an asteroid have been fairly different from each other, none of them felt like I was in charge. Usually science took the lead, and that felt a lot more natural to me. After all, most of the time they are the department most involved in these expeditions. As a final note, the wiki's blurb for the Bridge Crew as shown above in OffRoad's post literally says "which means you fly and work sensors. That's pretty much it." with the entire box making no/minimal reference to most of the above responsibilities. Personally, and I may be wrong here, I feel like most people play BC because they want to be a pilot, either of the Horizon or the Intrepid. And if that's the case, and maybe this is just my style of DMing bleeding through, I say let people be pilots with minimal strings attached.

Personally I agree on the 25 thing. For most command members, I see this as an IC experience thing (I might be wrong about the intention), but I don't think that applies with Bridge Crew. Sure they should definitely know how to fly, but they aren't coordinating lesser pilots, so don't need to be more experienced than anyone else. I hope that makes sense. Also, I'd argue a command level age restriction is a little weird given that, at least on the manifest, they aren't even actually command, they're civilian crew. It's not a big deal, but they definitely don't have the IC authority (In my understanding at least) that the rest of command do, and so I don't think letting a younger character in would be terrible. As for the whitelists, I'm not certain. The only two whitelists I have, and therefore have some grounds for my input on, are Tajara and IPC, both of which are already allowed. Which one's aren't? I can see the arguement that maybe Dionae are too slow, but I wouldn't be surprised seeing any other race in the job.

So this isn't an original suggestion, but I honestly can't remember who, when or where this was said so I'll repeat it here. Given that baselines are effectively the default IPC in society, it feels like there should be more variations in their design. Not in a mechanical way, they're supposed to be in the middle chassis and they do that well, but things like other head shapes or limb designs could sell the 'common with variation' vibe I'd expect from them. I'm not going to claim I've thought this through much, but it was something you reminded me of. This would be interesting. Right now I struggle to justify not taking a generally positive outlook on synthetics with my characters because there has been very little evidence for them being "bad" in recent lore. More generally, I'd like to see more synth focused factions that players can actually use for their characters. The SLF and Purpose are interesting from the overall lore standing, but not so much when making a character. And while I really, really like the IPC purchasing freedom stuff, I think it does suffer from the overall lack of context we have on in game economics (Though I totally understand why we don't go down this hole.) Still, if a baseline works as a bartender, how long would it take to buy their freedom? What about an accessory frame? Working as an investigator? It gets a little hard to conceptualise, at least for me.

Yeah, I agree with Matt here. For low pop (Which is predominantly when I play) Technomancer is basically one of the only antags we see, but I think Visitors provides Technomancer with meat for high pop that solo can't. As for meteor, that sounds insane. Like, I don't actually know what it is, but I can guess from the name, and given that Technomancer is a mode I see as low pop, having it replaced with a mode that relies on engineers seems like it's going to ruin a lot more rounds than it makes interesting.

This is mostly what I meant. Though I am curious if they can still do external prosthesis (i.e. giving someone a replacement arm) or if that's also up to medical. (The rest of my comments are made assuming external prosthesis are medical's job. If they aren't ignore them.) I agree, but will keep my personal opinions on how Surgeon as a role works out of here, as they are largely irrelevant and very heated. Also, given that there are a few ex-roboticist, now-mechanist characters out there who focused on the prosthetics side of things, it is a shame those players are forced to take that element of things out of the game and into other channels (Relay, the Forums, etc.).

Prosthetics (I believe, maybe I've been caught in the great Machinist confusion) are now the responsibility of medical. I don't know if making them is still the Machinist's job (That seems like a bit of a logistical nightmare if it is, as it's not longer a sprint across the central ring, but a journey to another deck entirely), but I'm almost 100% certain the surgery to attach the prosthetic is now exclusively the Surgeon's job.