Captain Gecko

Admirals meet with the Lord's Claws and the Hegemon himself to discuss piracy matters Translated into Tau Ceti Basic: Yesterday marked an exceptional day, as all three admirals of the Izweski Navy were gathered to discuss important matters. Lord-Admiral Yizarus of the First Fleet, Lord-Admiral Gour'za of the Second and Lord-Admiral Za’Akaix’Xitac K’lax of the Third and Fourth were all summoned to the Hegemon’s Palace to meet with Notzar Izweski in person, as well as Mizaruz Izweski, the Lord’s Claws. With the large majority of the first three fleets kept in extended defense duties around Moghes, many pirates were quick to use this as an opportunity to extend their operations. Reports of smuggled goods found have increased, as well as attacks on civilian ships, Unathite or otherwise. More importantly, multiple raids on Hegemonic colonies have been recorded. Despite the Fourth Fleet’s best efforts, they simply cannot keep up with the rising tide of pirate aggression. The point of this meeting was to find a quick solution to this growing issue. From revising the Hegemonic space battle doctrine to new spacecraft design, everything was brought up, but most of these solutions proved either too slow to implement or way too expensive. It would be the Admiral of the Fourth Fleet, however, that brought the most interesting solution. There are already many Unathi pirates that have sworn fealty to the Hegemony in exchange for their crimes to be forgiven, but they generally are used in very minor roles. Having worked with them in the past, though, Admiral Xitac proposed that these friendly pirates be used in more active roles, to fight minor threats such as lone pirate crews directly to allow Hegemonic ships to focus on larger threats, and to better integrate them into military strategy when facing greater threats. This suggestion wasn’t accepted without reserves. Many of these pirates follow their own codes and tend to not act with the same honor as proper soldiers. The Hegemon expects these pirates to be monitored more closely to avoid embarrassments, but overall, all members of the meeting see the small issues this option raises as worth it if it means better protecting the people of the Hegemonic colonies and securing space around it.

I think this could be interesting, honestly, but at the same the RD/scientists should probably still have access to the Operation RnD, since the servers are, for now, still in science. This would leave us with needing to replace it with something else for scientists to do. Chemistry is useful, and wiring can be very fun (if you want to try, and most people don't alas), but it can only get you so far.

Thinking about it, I believe removing antagonists COULD be an interesting thing. However we'd have to replace them with something. The reason why quite a few people leave the moment extended passes the vote is that it just may get boring. Some players aren't THAT into doing their needed job the first 10 minutes of the round, and then sitting in the bar for the following 2 hours. We'd need something to do. So here's the idea: We replace antags by random events. Yes we already have random events, but these are rarely a danger, and do not involve everyone. The goal of these new random events, which we're gonna call Action Events, as a placeholder name, have THREE main goals: - Replace antags when it comes to intensity. This itensity could be adjusted to player count and/or to a vote before the round starts, asking players to vote for the round intensity between 0 to 5, or 0 to 10. The higher the intensity, the more often Action Events happen, and the more brutal they are. - Have the potential to involve all departments, with their intensity being adjusted to fit their playstyles (IE: security would get something more intense and action-focused, less-so for Engineering.) Which is something that most antags do not. A ling, for instance, will get sec involved, probably medical, and maybe science if it's caught alive; but everyone else could wait it out in the bar, and unless the ling actively went for them, nothing would happen. Because of that, it would be wise to also implement a system that checks which departments are crewed before throwing an event that the crew may be unable to respond to (IE: avoid throwing an engineering-focused events when there are no engineers playing.) - Add something to the roleplay/to roleplay about. These would be canon, or at least, work within the framework of extended (IE: you can still keep player deaths and some other things non-canon and so on), and thus provide some roleplaying stakes and opportunities, which are minimal with current antags and how they work. I can already give you a list of events I just came up with right now, but we can -and should- make the list bigger, more varied, to avoid people getting bored of doing the same events over and over. To me, what would be perfect is at least 10 different types of Action Events for each department (including cross-department ones; and ones that naturally include other departments, for instance intense action-oriented ones will obviously have medical do some work afterward) but having even more doesn't hurt. We keep current random events too also, such as blobs, rogue drones, space hazards and so on. Here they are:

Honestly I'm okay so far with our antagonists, generally. If I had to mention a point of contention, as far as I go with a science main, is how you very quickly end up out of ideas of what to do with captured vamps and lings you put in your cells, but nothing that can't be fixed with good gimmicks and ingenious roleplay. I don't know what we'd have to change or remove if we'd somehow need to do that. Perhaps one of the main issue, if we really want to look for one, is that Aurora has been elvolving since it was first created, into the mostly RP experience it is today. Most of the antags we have were not made for HRP, but just balanced around the server's rules and player needs. That's not a big issue, but what could be even better would be antags with roleplay in mind from the get go, revolving around RP, and so on. I think the recent addition of psionics is a good instance of it, though still just a tool in a classic Antag's armory, some of these powers are just things purely revolving around mental influence. Of course that's a bit shaky, purely relying on other players' willingness to actually be fair and play along (most people do thankfully!) But worst case scenario we can learn as we go. Offship antags might be interesting too.

I agree with the goofy side of hooks and peg legs. I've updated the OP to incorporate what some of you guys said.

Smooth is good for fast games. It's good for CM, for TG, it's good for SS14 even... but it really doesn't feel right with Aurora. First I really, REALLY feel like we're actually slower, and not that it's just an impression. My Unathi cannot actually sprint as far as they used to, perhaps something to do with the stamina going down faster, I don't know how it works, but something has changed gameplay-wise. As far as the smoothness goes... Yeah as people said before, it's actually frustrating to play like this. I find this unbearable on my end, I feel super sluggish playing a lizard, and I can't imagine how G2s and Dionae must feel. Even if there are no actual changes in speed it just doesn't feel good.

Currently, all prothetic limbs are robotics. That makes them all, I assume rather expensive, even the unbranded ones. I think it should make sense to have non-robotic options as far as prothetic limbs go, it could most likely fit characters that would somehow not want robotic limbs, would not have the funds to choose robotic limbs over cheaper options, and do not have the will nor the ability to get Dionae nymphs as an option. Thus I propose non-robotic limb options! These would be cheaper options, generally with drawbacks, though some would be craftable in rounds (helps when you need something quick and the Robotician isn't there.) Here's what I have in mind so far: - Non-robotic/mechanical prothetics: - For legs, feet, arms and/or hands. - Your standard non-robotic prothetic. It's purely mechanical, which means that it should not be knocked out by EMPs. Perhaps they could be made less effective than normal prosthetics to balance them however, perhaps just making them more fragile? - Running/Blade prothetics: - For legs AND feet. - Similar to the previous ones, just a different look. - Peg leg: - For feet. - An actual peg leg. It should slow down your walk speed. Also, it should be craftable! With just wood planks, steel sheets, and other materials... Plastic? Minable materials (phoron peg leg anyone???) and so on. Because it's a bit goofy, and unrealistic to barge at work with this, these would not be part of the prothetic selection in the character setup menu, the only way to get them would be through crafting. - Hook hand: - For hands. - An hook for your hands, yarrr! Renders your hand basically useless. You can no longer grab, carry, hold things in your hand, and so on. You do get to dish out some bonus slashing damages on attacks, though, much like a Unathi/Tajara's claws. Just like the peg legs, the only way to get them would be through crafting, you cannot spawn directly with these to avoid having John MacHook, Assistant (NT) spawn in every games to do a little bit of trolling.

The Pool Holodeck scene happens to have two missing blocks.

Alright! Well, we would like to see you expand some more on your character's backstory. How did he end up on the Horizon? Why? What kind of job would he even do and why also?

Hello! Sorry for taking a little while to respond. I've got a few questions. 1) How old is Keth’ran? Or in what year was he born? You make it sound like he experienced the Contact War so I don't imagine him to be too young. 2) Is he leaning more on the Traditional side of things? Or is he more loyal to the Hegemony? 3) What faith is he following?

The Research director's office has that weird, useless spot. Either fill it with the table by extending said table, or remove it. Also cannot properly access the locker, or the drawer, most likely due to ledges being wonky... But that's less of a mapping issue I imagine?

OH HELL YEAH, METAL CRUSHERS! I can't wait to see that in the game, that's going to be siiiick! Make sure to include some kind of paper with instructions on how to actually build an exo, though, you don't want to end up with an antag that actually doesn't know what to do with all these parts!

Lore Impact: Light? Species: General Short Description: Giving proper lore behind the infamous "Biohazard Levels" How will this be reflected on-station?: Crew, notably Medical, Science and perhaps even engineering, will have some kind system to refer to when handling Biohazard... Or just a tool for roleplay. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: I believe so, yeah. I haven't seen such a thing anywhere else on the wiki; 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?: Yep Long Description: Last non-canon Lii'dra attack event inspired me, especially with the announcement referring to them as a "Level 9 Biohazard." I felt like giving these Biohazard some proper lore, not only to make sense out of them, but also to flesh out Aurora's setting some more, and give players some more tools to roleplay. I do not know where in the Wiki this would fit, on another page, or as a page on its own, but I feel like it should be here, in our lore, no matter what. The lore app presents an Interstellar Biohazard Levels Index, which works much in the same way as the real life Richter Scale, or the Volcanic explosivity Index, to deduct how dangerous a Biohazard may be. This goes from the total absence of life (and thus of Biohazards) to theorical entities that can bring apocalypse on an interstellar scale (like Titan Diona forms.) Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B5tG9e1CdSyb9mpjHMahBuo-ioRWj1Ul_JaaotJYucE/edit?usp=sharing PS: Yes I know I am a lore deputy, but I work on space lizards. Since this is technically out of my alley, I thought it would be more pertinent to actually go through the whole canon app route.

I like them, but the issue is there doesn't seem to be a message telling you WHEN it ends. On my own eventually, I just had Sezrak use his prescribedd Minaphobin to get out of the emotional influence, so it made me think... Why not make it mechanical? By that I mean just adding a message to say when the effects of the psionic emotional influence ends. Then, consuming one of the following medication would prompt the end message right away: - Minaphobin - Corophenidate - Emoxanyl - Nerospectan - Neurapan - Neurostabin - Orastabin - Parvosil

Hello! So spirituality is extremely important to Unathi, at least more with them than any other species in the Spur, however I don't think we get to know what Sathess' religions is... So which would it be? And why?

I didn't even know he was on trial. Broadsword is great and I love him. Both RP-wise and as far as playing with goes.

Legend. Thanks for your work!

Yeah the auto-balance sucks, agreed. The pop-up idea is pretty cool though!

What the title says. I got to play two Revolution rounds in the last two weeks, one with no loyalists and me as Head-rev, and one with no revolutionaries (at the start, withot some admins switching things around) as Head-loyalist. Both were more or less boring (though thankfully admins switching some roles in the second case helped), and the fact we don't have people on the other side playing along with the gimmick makes it extremely hard to... Well, make a gimmick work. It leads to underwhelming rounds, both for the non-antag looking to play along and for the antag themselves. So, here's what we can do: - If the game cannot have at least one rev and one loyalist, move to another game mode (the better option to me) - Have the game automatically take one of the antags and "auto-balance" the round, putting them in the other role.

Got to meet Sefiya in-round. I can't say much about skills as a CMO, though I haven't witnessed anything bad really, but as far as roleplaying goes, it's definitely pleasant!

Oh boy, I loved Zivic, and I didn't even get to interact with him that much! Anyways, let's focus on the lizard at hand! 1) Faith, that's very important to Unathi, and I don't see any mentions of it! Now considering his origins, I can probably get a good idea of what religion he's following, but beyond that what's his view on it? Is he very pious? Not at all? Something in-between? 2) What's Ks'aazi's opinion on Notzar? And of the current direction Moghes/The Hegemony is heading to (if he even cares that much about such things)