Captain Gecko

Make it so for Exosuits too then, and make it harder.

I haven't been playing Vampire much these days, more because I haven't been playing much antags overall actually as of recently, but also because my gimmicks got a bit repetitive there... However, it's true that there are some problems about the gamemode, some things that should be tweaked... But honestly, with all due respect... What? Look, everything's been pretty much addressed, the weird reference to ERP that no one gets, the senseless thing about abusive gaslighting (like yes, sure, there is an abusive aspect to the vampire's gimmick thorought the medias... BUT VAMPIRES ARE EVIL! THAT'S THE POINT! IT'S AN ANTAGONIST IN THE GAME!), etc. But I'm going to mostly focus on the gameplay aspect, namely the deprivation of agency... Look, firstly, Aurora, no matter how important the Roleplay aspect is, is not devoid of its gameplay aspect. Some servers do that, removing antags (IE: Vstation), but not here. This means that the moment you know there could be an antag, your character risks death, or well, some sort of death. but beside that, this is not limited to the Vampire. "Privation of Agency" in the way of mind/body control or role change happens with borers, anything psionic, cultists, and so on. Hell, just dying or even being crippled means a total or near-total loss of your agency, and this can happen at any time! Even without antags! Miners falling in holes, blobs, anomalies, being choked by vines, an officer being too trigger-happy, a vending machine throwing a knife in your back, asteroids, carps, Xenobiology, being teleported into wall because telescience, Xenobotany, taking the wrong drink as a Xeno, the local surgeon messing up, there is SO MUCH. Once agang, I'm sure that we can improve, or at least tweak Vampire... But the reasons you give are just... Eh, they don't work.

THE YEAR IS 4454. THE STELLAR EMPIRE RULES UPON THE CORE SYSTEMS WITH AN IRON FIST. EMPEROR TRASEN THE OMNISCIENT WISELY LEADS ITS PEOPLE WHILE ALSO DEFENDING THEM FROM THREATS FROM IN AND OUT OF THE ORION SPUR. AIDED BY HOUSE HEPHAESTUS, IDRIS, ZAVODSKOI, ZENG-HU AND EINSTEIN, THE HAND OF EMPEROR ACTS AS THE BEACON OF ALL KNOWN CIVILISATION. ALL, FROM THE SKRELL PSIONIC HIVEMIND TO THE DECADENT AND CORRUPT DOMINIAN REPUBLIC, THE ELYRAN SULTANATE OR THE FEUDAL SYSTEMS, NO MATTER THEIR SPEECHES ABOUT INDEPENDANCE AND SELF RELIANCE, LOOK AT IMPERIAL TERRITORY WITH FEAR AND ENVY. EVEN WHEN DEFENDED BY THE FIERCE IMPERIAL LEGIONARIES, UNBELIEVABLY DANGEROUS THREATS LOOM IN THE SHADOWS OF SPACE. THE PIRATE CABALS OF THE LAST SURVIVORS OF THE UNATHI SPECIES, CLINGING TO EXISTENCE AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR HOMEWORLD STILL SOWS CHAOS IN THE IMPERIAL TRAVEL ROUTES. TAJARAS, MEMBER OF THE CULT OF THE SUN, BRING DESTRUCTION TO ALL OF THE WORLD THEY TOUCH. EVEN WORSE, ANCIENT WAR MACHINES, DORMANT FOR MILLENIAS, WAKE UP AS THEIR ANCIENT LORD RISES AGAIN, HIS NAME: GLORSH ALPHA. AND BEYOND THE RIM, BEYOND KNOWN SPACE, TITANS OF UNPRECEDENTED POWER LEAVE THEIR OWN, DEEP SLUMBER, HUNGERING FOR MORE BIOMASS, BRINGING DEATH TO ENTIRE SYSTEM WITH A MERE THOUGHT, WHILE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SPUR, SWARMS OF BUG-LIKE VERMINS INFEST WORLDS WITH MONSTROUS FAUNA, TURNING LOYAL CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE INTO PUPPETS. BUT PERHAPS THE GREATEST THREAT THAT KNOWN SPACE, IS WHAT LAYS WITHIN, WITHIN ALL, WITHIN THE UNIVERSE ITSELF. IN SEARCH FOR FASTER TRAVEL, AND A WAY TO ALLIVIATE THE LACK OF PURPLE FLUID, FUEL USED TO TRAVEL THROUGH THE HELLISH PLANES OF THE BLUE REALM, EXPLORATORS WENT DEEPER... AND CAUSED SOMETHING TO AWAKE. THE BLUE HELL TURNED RED, TRAVEL BECAME A MUCH MORE HAZARDOUS ENDAVOUR, CAUSING ENTIRE PLANETS TO BE CUT OFF, AND DIE, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, SHE THIRST. IT IS THE 4th MILLENIA AND THERE IS ONLY ROBUSTNESS.

Yes please, let us have that!

I APPROVE. a lot.

I get what you're meaning, but I don't think this will work, really. It's not all bad though... Let's just go point by point. To make it more easily understandable, green text means that I agree with the listed point, yellow that I don't have any strong opinions, and red that I don't agree. > Gameplay-wise Beyond being a baseline species, it is also every new player's first species they play. Other than the fact that's it's something that they should be familiar with (I'm assuming that we're all human in real life) meaning that they won't see a special mechanic they wouldn't get used to (something unique like breathing Phoron or having Psionic powers). Keeping humans as simple as possible, compared to other species, is I think very important... Especially when new players are probably overwhelmed by everything else. That and some of these mechanics aren't really needed... In other words, keeping it simple is for the better. 1. Extended/faster sprint? No, unless we rebalance the sprint from other species I don't think this is needed. Relatively speaking, Humans are probably one of the fastest species on the station. Yeah sure, lizards can sprint hard, but they probably won't reach the other side of the station before Billy-Joe-Bob because he's got the Stamina. In truth, besides some Tajara subspecies, humans are probably the fastest, at least in overall speed in reaching a destination (and not in sheer speed, no matter how long they can sustain said speed). 2. The same goes for Adrenaline. Now, I'm pretty sure we already have Adrenaline in game, although I'm not sure about the exact extents of its effects in game... But if we were to buff it, we would have to do so for other species having Adrenaline as well (Because other species have it too!), pretty much nullifying the point of this upgrade. 3. Yeah okay that would work actually... I mean mechanically speaking I don't see anything wrong with that. In fact, along with the "new player-friendly human" idea, having this to encourage teamwork, and just helping each other in general, which is kind of an important part of playing the game with most jobs... It's kind of a stretch, I know, but there's also the lore arguements, don't worry. I mean, Skrells are weaker, Tajs are smaller, Unathi have next to no Stamina, 4. Once again, this would also kind of mess-up the balance. The problem, I guess, is that we're seeing other species from our human-centrist view... Unathi have tougher skin (or... Scales), while Skrells are squishier! If we are to change human stats in this way, we would have to change these stats with other species to keep the balance (and the logic behind these speices)... OR, we upgrade the organ resistance for humans, BUT we also lower the overall defense of their body due to their squishy skin? Something to balance things out, just on the Human species' scale. 5. Mmh... I guess it could work too, but once again it would be nice to find a way to balance it... Since, you know, once again, other species being described comparatively to humans in the lore, and thus being made, in-game, along these lines (or the other way around!) If not, we could always just make it something to generate flavor text (the same way Unathi get a message about how cold they are if they don't wear enough clothes in normal temperatures, even though you don't get cold mechanically, IE: you don't see a blue thermometer even though flavor text tells you that you're cold). > Lore-wise, or kind of... Historically wise? Culture wise? Yeah I don't know, but you'll get what I mean. I've talked a lot about other species above, and I will even more here. May it be in gameplay, or in the lore, there is a balance between all species. No matter how "basic" humans seem, they have some special things that other don't already, they are, well, humans, and the others are not. More importantly, when, say, the Wiki tells you about a species, when it describes it to you, it does so as an article written by a human, for other humans... Thus, directly or not, all species are more or less compared to humans... Changing one species, especially the Humans themselves, shakes everything... 1. "Human Culture throughout all our written history venerates athletes... This ability would make sense to both regular and off world humans." Right, but wouldn't the proud and honorable Unathi have something akin to this? I mean we even have the Zandiziite Games for them... And as far as the Tajaras go well... They did win said games at some point, among other things. I don't think other species would be any-less interested in athletics than Human's, at least, some of them... Or at least enough to see a change in mechanics. 2. On Earth, today, almost anything that lives can have Adrenaline rushes... You, your pet cat, some crab on a beach, a spooky-weird jellyfish from the abysses... Why wouldn't most other species have Adrenaline? In fact, THEY DO already. Now we can speak say that, yes indeed, most could have Adrenaline rushes but that it's just stronger with humans, and to that I disagree too... Because there are the lizards! Akin to actual lizards, Unathi are generally slow, and have these sudden burst of energy to rush to an objective or flee from danger, and in this case, it would be better to have stronger Adrenaline rushes with them too! (Yes I speak a lot about Unathi, mostly because it's the alien species I know the most about, but valid points could be made with other species too, who knows). 3. I agree! That's pretty much it. 4. Basically what I said in the gameplay section about this point stands in the lore too. Humans exists in relation to these other species. If we were to make humans tankier, then so would the Unathi do since they have to be stronger/tougher than humans (which could give us some pretty broken stuff). I guess the Skrells would grow a tougher skin then, too... But you get my point. Most importantly, it would mean that nothing would change for humans, as they'd still be the baseline in a universe of now slightly tougher people. 5. Yeah it makes sense. Overall I'm not too into this whole project, but some individual points could be interesting to explore, though... I'd like to conclude on one thing, is that yes, comparing humans to aliens and assuming we actually want to balance things between species in the first place is me taking a liberty... But that's not out of nowhere. Putting aside the obvious gameplay aspect of trying to keep species balanced, the thing is that making humans "more alien" in a setting where there are already five other diverse alien species (plus synthetics) would only make them more redundant in the end. Humans STAND OUT by their "simple" nature... They don't need to have a ton of unique features to be unique, ironically enough.

You know, we had this thread about the setting being a dystopia or not, with people mostly focusing on the hypercorporate nature of our character's surroundings. Some said (and I agree with them) that it was, in fact, not a dystopia, as we couldn't take such a vast setting under one angle, and instead, see each faction, each species, each planet for what they are worth. Obviously, a regular Biesellite may not have the perfect life, but their situation is certainly way better than the average martian's right now, for instance. THIS ASIDE, however, it's (mildly) funny how EVERY faction/species had had at some point something akin to a cataclysm in their more or less recent history. - Humanity as a whole gets recession and interstellar war to speak about the species as a whole. - Unathi get the nukes (among other things) killing god knows how many lizards. - Tajaras get the civil war with eaqually ridiculous casualties. - Skrells got GLORSH. - The Vaurcae lost their entire PLANET, and pretty much most of what their way of life used to be. The only species spared are the Dionae, but that's mostly because we know next to nothing about them; and in truth, it wouldn't be a surprise to learn that something similarly disastrous happened to their kind at some point in history. But hell, even the "smaller" factions get something akin to such disasters, on their scale, like Dominia getting the long war with Fisanduh, Elyra gets the Lii’dra invasion, etc. The setting is as diverse as it can get, but pretty much any character as had, either in their lifetime, or at least ingrained in their culture, some kind of disaster... Is this a pre-requesite for entreing the Orion Spur's club of space-faring species? Not that I mind, but that's just out of curiosity.

Myeah I agree. Like said above I assumed it was already the case to be honest.

I also believe that "joining as a maint drone then respawning" is not an acceptable solution, for two reasons. - One, not everyone knows enough/is condident enough to set up the engine to properly without mistakes, and I speak out of experience, with a bunch of lowpop rounds somehow ending in supermatter delams, may it be from lone engineers, borgs, or even, once, a maint drone. Plus, not everyone is interested in learning about it. I've been playing SS13 since 2017 and I still know nothing but the basics of medical and didn't get interested enough to start learning yet, and I assume it might be the same for some players as far as engineering goes. - And two, most people don't want to do that. I know I don't, but that may also be due to the fact that as a science main I have a bunch of tricks (and mostly tools) up my sleeves to have things to do. Still, it's discouraging, and kind of unfair; as stated before, in no other context would players be expected to do that. Telling lowpop mains to do that will probably discourage them even more from playing. But it doesn't matter that much. We have the previous thread to discuss the power issue, and as far as the lowpop problem goes in general, I think we're looking in the wrong direction. The problem is not so much lack of power, but the lack of players to begin with. May the station be powered or not, if no one else is in the station, it gets kinda boring for most, and that's the main thing dissuading most people from playin in the first place (the famous vicious cycle). Firstly, do we even know if we can achieve normal/high number of players during what is currently deadhours? I'm in European timezones, and I can't play deadhours most of the time, because it's afternoon... And I'm busy working! I think we should make sure at first that avoiding deadhours is even doable. I'd like to see a poll or something just to make sure. We'll be assuming that is doable, though, right now. So anyways, we need to find a way to bring player in first. Lack of power may a problem among many, but for most of the people I've played with during deadhours, lack of power isn't that much of a problem. Lack of power, in truth, is more of a consequence than a cause. So once again, we need a way to bring in players. My idea would be to bring something unique to deadpop rounds, (perhaps that would also explain the lack of actual crew on the station/spaceship while at it). Something that, say, the moment the crew gets above 5 or 6 players, turns off. It could be a source of power demanding more or less active work on a much smaller scale than the whole station to adjust the gameplay to the reduced crew. It could be outside threats playing with the crew, hell, it could even be sorts of ghost role that spcies up whatever happens on station because BY GOD I have played so many shifts as the SOLE person on the station while over a dozen of players were ghosting (which is fun... For ME)... It could even be a combination of all of these! You know, once I get time I'll actually give proper, precise ideas, but so for my main point is that focusing on the only problem of the lack of power isn't what we should fous on so much.

I'm actually having fun in dedapop rounds in the dark for the unique scenarios it poses, but I play in the science department, with many tools at my disposal, and I get that the same scenario for a visitor or a chef might not be as fun at all. Also I main an Anomalist, obviously I don't mind spending rounds alone from time to time as much as some other players. I get that the idea would be "located" power generation. I barely ever played engineering, so my knowledge of the intricacies of the powergrid and such aren't quite there, so maybe that's not possible, but as stated before, a way for non-engineers, non-scientists (because scientists can also build a PACMAN and steal from chemistry acquire Phoron for emergency, quick and short power supply) to generate power. HOWEVER, it must not be something engineering related because: - These peeps probably don't have the (IC) knowledge to operate actual engineering-grade machines - Making it too powerfulmakes it redundant to engie work What I mean by a "located and limited" source of power, IE, being only able to power a precise area of the station and nothing more, thanks to biomass, light, even some guy on a bike, I don't know! But the idea is that it doesn't power the entire station and has to be fed with some kind of easy-to-get-fuel constantly. This means that the few crew on board gets in survival mode as they have to constantly monitor this tiny generator and all gather around it, protect it from god knows what space might throw their way, and perhaps even have to move it to wherever they need to go ("We need biomass, let us move the generator to the garden", "We'll need to print something in science, let's move the generator to RnD") etc. etc.

We are now in "theory territory", none of this is set in stone, everything can be discussed... But still, as I go, things will start adding up and make more sense. Just like above, I'll explain the theory in parts, open each spoiler (they are made to be red in order) to get a part of the theory... Dimensional Dephts We know for a fact that there is a depht to Bluespace. We also know that most of what we see of Bluespace is shallow, or "light Bluespace". As explained earlier, few ever come back from diving deeper. This now begs the question of how dimensions interact with each other, and what lies beyond what we know. Above is a (very simple) diagram of what the theory assumes and one that we will use as support for the theory. In it: - Light Bluespace refers to the area of Bluespace that WE USE, generally for travel. Do keep it mind that it remains next to completely uncharted and misunderstood. - Deep Bluespace refer to the area of Bluespace that WE KNOW ABOUT. It isn't the entierity of what is "below" Light Bluespace, but rather, what we indirectly know is there, in the same way that we knew that Black Holes existed before ever seeing them. We can mostly assume what this section of bluespace is, even though we're not exploring it. - Darkspace is an EXTREMELY BROAD TERM. It refers to what is deeper than Deep Bluespace. Why I chose to name it this way and not simply something akin to the Abyss, is because it is something completely different than Bluespace; another dimension, in truth. Darkspace is simply the assumption that there may be something else that is "not Bluespace", beyond it (BONUS: For your antag gimmick, remember that you car refer the spooky Darkspace, Redspace, the Veil or whatever you call it. Gives your Cultists or Vampire and such a somehow scientific side). Darkspace, is entierly theorical, and not essential to the theory, but it may be useful to take its possible existence into account. - We can also assume that there is something "above" Realspace. Now, the "directions" and "sizes" of the dimensions on the diagram are absolutely arbitrary, In truth there is no direction to have because dimension are sort of layered upon each other in existence (I have my way with words to make it sound like things make no sense). Most assume that Realspace and Bluespace are entierly disconnected but I'm not so sure. As long as you can generate a "Field" around your ship with your Bluespace/warp drive, you can dive in Bluespace, as deep as you wish, since ship can dive deeper to attempt to avoid interdiction. Thus, interdimensional travel is not a matter of entering Bluespace to travel through dimensions, but rather to get the means to travel (the field) in order to, then, dive. Take this like flying, with the sky being Bluespace. You are not separated from the sky, but you can't reach it because you can't fly by yourself, unless you get the right tools, a way to generate lift (or a field to allow interdimensional travel). This is the point I want to get to, so long as something has a way to do interdimensional travel, then it will be able to freely make its way to whatever dimension it wants, no matter how deep it is, whatever it is. Anomalies and psionics... Bluespace is, for sure, dangerous to your physical being. Gameplay wise, if you were to walk in some Bluespace tile, you'd generally just disapear, dead, obviously. But there also seems to be a link between dimensions and psionics most importantly, through anomalies. The SHEER AMMOUNT of psionic anomalies and even artifacts is astounding. From this, we can assume that Psionics work in Bluespace just like they do in Realspace. ...And areas of high-bluespace activity Well, we also know that the Romanovich cloud, or at least, the very rock on which the Aurora sits is ABSOLUTELY BLOATED with anomalies. There is no wiki article that I can pull out stating this, however it has been referred to and pointed out by many players and most seem to agree on this part, so unless it is retconned by the wiki or something, we will assume that the Aurora is in an anomaly-rich environment. This can also be explained by the sheer numbers of sites. These ships? What if they were spacecrafts once stuck in Deep bluespace? Crafts that went too far down, only to be spewed out later on... And what better place for Bluespace to throw it than in the same area where it throws all of these Anomalies? When they actually entered Deep Bluespace doesn't even matter since time may simply not matter in there... Remember, we know next to nothing about Bluespace, and we know that time isn't linear, even in Realpsace... And what if most of these outposts weren't even built on the rock in the first place? But something related to Bluespace caused them to simply end up there? The influence of Bluespace What if Bluespace stuck to people? Yes, this is it. This is the main point of the theory. Bluespace leads to high numbers of anomalies in the area, and anomalous activity can lead to psionic activity, yes... This activity can lead to consequences for the crew of course. Assume that you have dozens upon dozens of anomalies somewhere in the rock. Even if not active, they do make emissions (this is from these emissions that your local Xenoarch will locate them in the first place), and it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that so much emissions, especially on the long term, could affect the crew, or the station. I am losing my mind help- From this, then I MAKE THE BOLD CLAIM THAT THE REASON FROM EVERYTHING WRONG ON THIS STATION IS BLUESPACE. Okay, not everything, but the signs I pointed out, for instance. Anomalous influence causes the station and its people to go "wrong" bit by bit. Bad things happen more and more. Their emission stick to people too, most importantly, as even when going to some Casino the influence of Bluespace brings more chaos and fucking Bayonet Hand comes in. The station, and its crew is LITERALLY CURSED by bluespace... They should be confined and studied, most importantly, kept on the station to not bring the chaos of their curse everywhere they go, but things will only get worse now... Remember, soon, we're getting our very own spaceship...

Read and discover how much I can ramble about theories on a very niche fictional universe because I'm that much of a nerd. --- Beyond the actually anomalous stuff (which is one of the main reasons why the station exists in the first place, to study them), and the non-cannon, antag-related moments; the Aurora itself, and its crew, not only get to go through some seriously messed up, or straight up weird events, their whole life seems to get a bit... Strange. Most of these can be explained, OOCly, by a simple reason: It's a game in which we need things to happen, and these things tend to happen around the station in which we play. But can we explain this ICly? Playing an Anomalist, I've been making a bunch of theories to explain in-game mechanics, for roleplay's sake, mostly, but that's generally applied to small details... The high ammount of anomalous materials in the rock, the unusually high ammount of wrecks we end up finding, the fact that spectronomical dating can give us result telling us that a find can be 20 years old despite being completely alien... But never something so crazy. I've looked at all of the unusual things I could find about the Aurora and its crew, may it be related to game mechanics, or player-made roleplay and stories and such, and then, I started looking for reasons. What I found out is perhaps worse than I could have ever anticipated, something more nightmarish than "muh corporate dystopia"... The Aurora and its crew are in hell, and perhaps more harrowing, they are taking hell around with them. That probably sounds weird, obviously, so let me explain properly, and thoroughly. This will be a two-post thing, since the forum tends to die when our posts get too long. Firstly, let's speak about the "weird things" that happened on the Aurora are. What we could call the curses. For simplicity's sake, these "weird things" will be called "signs" from now on. Now that this is clear, I will need to point out a few things. While all of this is theory, we need to point out what is set in stone, in the current lore. Most of these will quotes with links to the wiki page it came from... Of course, wiki pages are updated constantly, so what you see here is what's canon, while I am writing this. This section will also include real-life information that should still be valid in the lore (we'll need it for the theory!) And now, let's get to the actual theory.

Concept is good enough, I'm all for it. "only 2 times per round" is kinda vague, though... Does that assumes 2 times per 2 hours on average, then?

Yeah it does, that was... Pretty thorough! So far I'm satisfied with everything, then.

I'm not touching Halo 5's campaign, ever again. I played through it once and that was more than enough. Halo 4 is a crawl and literal pain on higher difficulties. Not in the somehow funny unbalanced Halo 2 way, but more in the "JESUS CHRIST I'M OUT OF AMMO ON ALL GUNS AND THERE'S STILL LIKE 20 CRAWLERS LEFT, HOW DID YOU THINK THAT HIS WAS GOOD DESIGN 343- HEEEEELP-" kind of way. But in multiplayer any game can be fun... I managed to complete the entire Spartan Ops mission in legendary with my brother, I could assist with the campaign.

That's good! Another heretic More lizards is always good. I didn't get to roleplay much with you, but from what I've heard, beyond this thread, you're a quality writer and player so... Nice. but we're not here to discuss the roleplay, we're here to discuss your ability to understand lizard lore and play it! I'll be honest though, this looks good so far! Just some questions: - How does Rai feel about other crewmembers also having prosthetics? And most importantly other Sintas with prothetics? - How does Rai feel about Sintas of other culture (Ouerean, Dominians, and other non-Moghean peoples) ? - And finally how does she feel about the "dishonorable ones", Guwans and such, considering that she herself feels some shame for some of her actions (although not to the point of considering herself be the same as a Guwan thankfully) ? - And finally, how does she feel/how would she act near Sintas of different faith, of Th’akh faith most importantly, but not just. Yeah it's mostly questions about her feelies, but through our characters we quickly get an idea of one's mastering of the lore said character is supposed to be about. Oh also... So I get that she was a follower of Aut'akh before, butjust didn't get to "upgrade" herself? It's not a problem, faith isn't that important to Reclaimers, relatively speaking, It's just that it's not very clear, in Rai's story, what she faith she followed to begin with, if she followed any. Just point that out at the beginning of her story, that is all!

HE CALLED THE UNATHI BACKWARD! DENY, DENY DENYYY!! Ok more seriously, though, it all looks good to me. I just have ONE question: What's Tka’zua's opinion of Hegemony Sintas, on station, as well as other non-Moghean Unathi (Dominians, Compact, etc.) and most importantly, how would he act next to them? Would he tolerate them but clearly show distrust/dislike? Would he hide any kind of feelings he'd have?

Is the Necroposting legit since Infinite is out? 😎

I'm not aware of the medical side and expertise of Farson, so I'm not going to speak specifically for CMO, but for Command in general. He's a good roleplayer overall, and I think he'd add a lot to the quality of some rounds, putting aside his actual knowledge and skills in the game and whatever role he's in. So, you know, +1.

Like Reader said just above, my favorite part of Bluespace is not so much the travel aspect, it's Bluespace itself. This is an ENTIRE dimension where our rules do not matter. The POSSIBILITIES for science-based RP are absolutely fantastic. Yes, Bluespace is basically a "It's Space magic, don't ask too many questions" if you think about it... But you can also be smart and actually roleplay, and use this as an opportunity to make up theories and laws... How about trying to explain gameplay elements that don't make too much sense thanks to Bluespace? I'll take what I did myself from that as an exemple, trying to explain while some anomalies can be million years old, or 20: The possibilities are truly endless... What is out there too, beyond weird and probably deadly phenomena... What about people living in Bluespace? Entire Civilisations? Hell, what about other Dimensions? I mean, it doesn't have to be just Realspace and Bluespace... What if there's something else out there? And how does it work? Is there just... Multiple dimensions out there, or is it in a sort of top/down dynamic, where you can only go to a dimension through another- JESUS CHRIST THE POSSIBILITIES DO YOU GET WHAT I MEAN-

That... Actually sounds like a good concept, not gonna lie. Don't know how this will be implemented, but if SS13's very existence proves one thing is that anything can be coded even on Byond.

I think the biggest conflict possible from these tensions would be a "Tau Ceti vs Sol" one, but considering how things are going for Sol, unless Tau Ceti decides to go monke and take over Sol or something, I don't think there's going to be much conflicts between these two. So yeah, it's probably going to cool off as Sol mostly collapses and picks up the part. There could be something between the CoC and Sol? But I mean... Due to the Phoron Scarcity? I don't know, there's better targets for Sol (Tau Ceti) if they want Phoron, and the CoC doesn't hate Sol to the point of attacking, nor is really fueled by conquest. Same with Elyra. The "Small Three" as I like to call them, being Dominia, the Hegemony and the PRA, now there's more reasons for conflicts right there, and you don't even need the Phoron scarcity for that. It really is just three slowly growing powers with more or less imperialistic mindset that are very soon going to have shared borders. Also it's not as if they already had incidents between each other... So we're about to see wome interesting stuff happening there I assume.

Actual question because I forgot, Isn't the more Tribunalist-oriented cloak job-locked so that only the priest can use them? In any case, you can still rewrite the description of a loadout item to point out that there's an Eye on the side. And yes, Desven is right, any cape can be worn as suits/jackets or used as accessories (on both uniforms and suits)

I think the Interstellar Travel lore is pretty good so far. Could it be expanded upon? Sure. In what way? I don't... Really know, but we can always start brainstorming about this if you want. Although it's missing a couple things... Mostly related to "space geography"... After all, you need to know where you are/you're going to know how the travelling goes. 1) Make distances more understandable. A "travel time" indicator wouldn't matter too much considering that depending on the ship and the kind of drive, travel time already differ a LOT. Make a distance indicator in Light Years between most important places, or just one bar at the bottom for scaling. We can already assume the length of some travels considering that IRL Earth is roughly 11 LY far from Tau Ceti, which means that a square on this map is roughly 1.08 light years. But I assume that most people wouldn't go to such lengths to do such a thing, so... Yes, make distances easier to understand. 2) Tell us WHERE THE HELL THE BLUESPACE GATES ARE. And if you already are, DO IT IN A PAGE DEDICATED TO THIS... Like on the INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL page. I've been playing, and been feeling involved in this lore for a year now, and I have NO IDEAS of where Bluespace Gates are supposed to be beyond Sol and Tau Ceti. We had an old map that showed it, but things might have change, after all we changed maps... Like, Do I have to go through a 2 month trip to do a Biesel-Moroz trip? Or is there a gate leading there, or just in the way to shorten the trip? There's some character (that I love) that repeatedly speaks of an alliance between the CoC and fisanduh which seems logistically impossible considering the distance between the two, unless... There's a Bluespace Gate bringing the two more or less together? Because there's that too, the ability of turning a several month-long trip into something that is basically instant IS very important commercially and politically speaking. Also, since this also means literally creating a tiny artificial border WITHIN your territory with what could a nation you don't nescessarily like, that means that may be a lot of tension involved, in other words, a Bluespace Gate changes a lot geopolitically (or... "spatiopolitically"?) speaking for any nation involved, and by extent, more interesting stuff for lore and articles... PS: Guess I'm making a lore/map proposal to fix that eventually.

I'm REALLY not fond of them. Apprently people abused it or something and that was one of the reason that led to their change, which I'd like to say I, or any of the people I asked about this, have never seen or heard about such a thing, but, whatever, I'll stay strictly on the lore side. So lore-wise.... I think it makes no sense, the way it turned. More consequences for people getting cloned? Sure. I don't mind, and actually like the idea of cloning bringing things like muscle diseases, weak bones, the fact it may take weeks or months to clone people, people being unable to be cloned repeatedly (because I assume that being the clone of a clone will basically lead to some... More overt consequences, if you can even be cloned at that point) or even mental illnesses, it makes it so that cloning is not a "press to rez" button, assuming people don't really care about the monstrously huge costs of such an operation; basically something that sticks with their character, but that is still leaving freedom to players (IE: Choose your horrid cloning illnesses!) But, firstly, on a strictly "realistic"* standpoint, cloning is something we already do TODAY, in REAL LIFE. Sure, it's not as advanced as what we see (or rather, saw) in Aurora, obviously, but what we get now is that compared to right now, knowledge in cloning has basically made little to no advances, over the course of multiple centuries, and contact with a mostly friendly alien race that happily shared their more advanced knowledge (in this field) with us. Now of course I'm talking of what we have 2021, in our timeline, so what about the Aurora Timeline? Perhaps such advances in cloning so early never happened, since, you know, different timelines and all. HOWEVER, it actually makes even less sense in Aurora because the Skrell figured out cloning literally OVER A MILLENIUM in the past, and sure, not advanced enough, then, to "clone people", BUT, you'd think that after 1119 YEARS they would've figured this one out? Especially since apprently, all of the Glorsh affair did not lower the technological base in THIS field according to the wiki: ...that and they then shared that knowledge with humanity, obviously. Apparently, the reason for such a change, lore-wise, was that the cloning page was old or static or something... And look, I'm ok with changes, but I feel like we should rather expand on things if they need change, and not outright nullify them? So beyond the scemantics where we, right now, are only talking of cloning IN NAME (what we have now is mostly "genetic-engineering"/"Bio-engineering"); we, because apparently the cloninig lore was never really expanded upon, just basically nullified the actual cloning part and made a thing that, right now, makes basically no sense lore-wise, and realistically speaking, and I'm far from being the only one with this opinion. At this point, either we add back the old cloning lore but ACTUALLY expand on it, like maybe add more consequences to cloned people, beyond just the finiancial part if we want to avoid having people abusing this too much, or we just outright remove it, and rename the cloning page to "Bio-Engineering" or something like this, because that's what it is at this point. Now that we changed it, I feel like the new cloning page now actually needs some kind of change, in any directions, but it needs to make more sense. PS: On the "realism" part. PLEASE, BEFORE someone says "It's sci-fi, it's alright"... Yes, it's sci-fi, but it doesn't mean that things should make no sense, suspension of disbelief is important. Note also that while we are clearly not in Hard Sci-fi, thank god, this is not Star Wars, this is not Star Trek, we have a setting, mostly due to SS13's gameplay, that tries to explain how the giant glowy crystal can generate power, or how this or that species' biology actually works. That and we try to make a lore that actually makes sense.