Captain Gecko

Alright how about these ones instead: Cult of the Geometer is the one we have, of course, but I'm just putting it here for comparison's sake. Obviously, the Gimmick is blood and we summon the big bad Nar-sie herself (himself? Itself? I don't know, I always remember refering and seeing other refer to Nar-sie as a she). Thanks to their magic tome, they can do pretty much anything, from bringing equipment to converting people, communicating, fortifying positions, etc. The vast range of runes that can be used means that the Geometer's cult can actually choose from a wide range of strategies. In our context of multiple cult being present, it would be perhaps the "Good at everything - Great at nothing" type of Cult. Cult of the Supermatter with the totally self-explanatory gimmick of radiations and such. Cultists here would be equipped with blessed/cursed supermatter shards or something akin to these in place of tomes. Instead of relying on direct opposition against the crew, they'd rely on various radiation-emitting items and constructs to weaken the crew and diverts its attention (from literally weakening them to causing harm, hallucination, partial blindness, etc.) until they can manage to summon their own Supermatter Demon. This means that this cult would probably be the closest thing we'd get to a stealth cult, despite them actively causing trouble to the crew meaning that everyone would still know that something is going on and start searching. On an extra note, that could be the basis for some funny antag lore about supermatter shards and such being pieces of a literal God. Cult of the Dark Moon which is perhaps my favorite context, and not just because I love Lovecraftian horror and Dead Space... Their gimmick is that they are the most Lovecraft-ish cult, though... But not just that. A planet sized object spawns on the space map, along with everything else generally generated... This planet-sized object is an Eldritch God-like horror that the local cultist venerate. Their goal is either to steer the ship toward it, or draw it to the ship with a large-enough "bait" they can summon in the end. The closer the ship gets to the planet, the more anomalous things get, with hallucinations, messages like "You feel like you shouldn't be here" and other twisted things happening all around, preventing the normal crew from actually giving the Cult a win without knowing it by reaching the planet. Additionally the cult itself relies on a lot of madness-inducing powers to weaken the crew. Gameplay-wise, this strikes me as a much more aggressive version of the Supermatter Cult, only, relying on "debuffing" the crew rather than equipping themselves with better cultist gear like the Geometer Cult does. Cult of the Singularity, a more open version of the Glorsh cult. The overall idea is to end up creating a being that achieved Singularity. Gimmick wise, it's the more science-based Cult although, as we'll see quickly, it doesn't prevent some... Anomalous events from happening. The idea would be to have one member be chosen to become the Singularity, and thus, will basically become the "Chosen One" of the Cult. This Chosen One gets basically plugged with God knows how many cybernetics horrors, rendering them extremely slow and vulnerable, however, they also act like a sort of second AI... Far weaker than an actual AI at first, mostly just being a floating camera, but slowly gaining power as the rest of the Cultist bring gear to empower them, allowing them to cast supernatural events against the crew. These cultists would have a sort of list of things to bring (Phoron, engines, scientific tools, computers, etc. Ideally, they'd have to take from most if not all departments), then, once it's done, undergo a final "ritual" to sacrifice themselves and merge their minds with the Chosen, effectively turning them into a proper Singularity, winning the round. This is a more "defensive" kind of cult, as cultists have to put their chosen one somewhere safe, and then, keep them in one piece until they can achieve their goal. Fortifications, traps, and the crew being on the offensive (for once) is to be expected. Pestilence Cult aka "I love you papa Nurgle" aka "Medical's worst nightmare" aka "I may have super-aids but I can tank bullets". More seriously, the Gimmick is obviously diseases. Now, what's the difference with radiations from the Supermatter Cult, then? Well, radiations are a sort of passive thing... Plant a magic rock, or bring an item somewhere, and let the radiations spread. In here, however, the diseases have to be actively spread. This means that this would be the most aggressive cult. Pestilence Cultists rely on actual combat to generally spread their diseases, melee combat generally. Obviously, Melee fighters generally get annihilated by security's big guns, so they must rely on various diseases to reinforce themselves, causing some debuffs on one end, while making them tankier on the other. But why spreading disease in the first place? With each infected (but living) member of the crew onboard, the cult grows stronger, and can buff themselves with more diseases. This plague that they spread to the crew wouldn't be lethal, but it would severely limit their ability to pose a threat to the cultists, and would need medical treatment to be cured, keeping constant pressure on the medical department and forcing the cultists to not go ham and absolutely kill everything they see (a dead player is not an infected player, there's nothing to gain from a corpse.) The moment there are enough plagued players onboard, the Cultists can start their final ritual to summon Nurgle The Plague God or something. Obviously all of this is concept, placeholder names, and merely concepts as far as mechanics goes.

Quite self-explanatory, really. We have all of these sweet ghost-roles like the Solarian Ship, or the Space Bar that actually spawn in ship/structures that can be seen on the starmap, and even reached. recently I've played my first Merchant round ever and I was surprised to see that the Merchant doesn't... Exist on the map, sort of. The Merchant's station cannot be seen on the Starmap, so I've been told, and the Merchant's ship cannot really be piloted, it just sort of Bluespace-teleports to the Horizon, just like most ships did in the time of the Aurora. It's fine, but I feel like it's lost potential. How about having an Intrepid or Mining Pod flying to the Merchant's base? How about having the Merchant pass by the Space Bar or even the Solarian ship to trade with these, only to bring their stuff to the Aurora? It's not just that it would make sense for the Merchant to be able to fly around and dock with whoever they want (or have whoever dock with their station), it's that it would be really fun!

Nar'sie turns out to be actually canon (hence the Xenoarcheological finds) and, after a pretty epic (and massively lag-inducing) final battle where all living things face the armies of cultists under the Geometer's orders, we ultimately fail and all die.

There's not much else to say other than the fact that I love Cult and it could seriously use an overhaul. I'm definitely contributing to this if this requires help to be made, may it be in writing or spriting... Because it HAS to be made.

Your suggestion is good, and aknowledged! We'll look at it, see what we'll do...

I would honestly love to have some kind of spacecraft for Xenoarcheology, or even just science as a whole, but, as far as I know, it's not supposed to happen, or at least, won't happen anytime soon. Thinking about this, I can certainly see why. I've been told it's to encourage roleplay with fellow miners, which is good, but coming from separate directions didn't prevent such a thing. We could already roleplay together on the Aurora, so long as we're on the same rock, we should be good. But the thing is that minin/xenoarcheology is much more dangerous right now, than back on the Aurora, coming there together, may be the smarter solution, for now. And yes I agree, the Intrepid should be for expeditions only, or any other kind of operation that warrants a small crew of its own.

Then for normal exavations, I'm not so sure, no. While I'm not very fond of having Xenoarcheology depending on other department to practice their job, due to them not having their own means of space travel, I don't think the Intrepid should be taken just for your regular Xenoarcheology excavations. The point of the Intrepid is still to have a large-ish team onboard, and that rarely happens with regular sorties. There's still ways to have the Xenoarchs be a tad more independent, but I don't think that this is the one. On another note, I already had proposed a few things there if this can pick your interest. There's no Intrepid in there, but some alternatives are possible.

I agree...? Yeah I think I support the idea. I didn't get to find any sort of site worthy of an actualy expedition (can we, yet?) but I'm certain it would be frustrating to miss an opportunity like this... Especially since, putting aside the difficulty and probably lethality of the journey (I don't mind, but I know some people do), it's very often tons of fun, gameplay-wise, and roleplay-wise. Outrunning the Gigaspider/Gigaggreimorian through the dark corridors of an abandonned facility, while characters thinking they won't get out of there a live start confessing stuff they would've never otherwise, only to survive miraculously is hardly something you can get in other situations. On the other hand, I generally saw expedition as that one extra-dangerous thing that would actually warrant a full team, and as far as I know, the Intrepid is for that. Assuming that expedition are at least just as dangerous with the Horizon, if the Xenoarch can't get enough people to properly crew the ship, then it's probably not going to go well out there... Still, I think this would be interesting, at least just to test out, see how it goes...

Yeah, you knew that was coming. It's a pleasure to see how far we have come in such a short time, from our very first, very messy first round on the Horizon to today. Obviously, with something so new and different change will have to be made... I feel like some big things should be changed, and I'm far from being the only one, but everyone is aware, and the NBT just dropped, so for now let's focus on something small, yet far from minor. The Eels, the damn Eels, man. Look, I get the idea, of having a rare but very dangerous creature out there. I also, generally don't mind unfair odds and events, I wouldn't be maining Xenoarcheology if I did, however there's a problem when this also means miners getting slaughtered and the ship missing on materials and multiple jobs ending up very... Limited. Once again, I imagine that many problems on the side will be fixed later on, so I really just want to focus on the Eel itself. Here are the problems I'm seeing so far: - They are redundant in their purpose. We already had a "rare but dangerous", Space Sharks. Now, of course, the Eel is much, MUCH more lethal than the shark, but as far as unique roles go, that's pretty much it. They hit hard and can take a lot of punishement. Now, there may be another role that had been planned instead, to be so dangerous that the only proper course of action is to run, which is actually very interesting and nice! But... - You can hardly outrun them. I do not mind overpowered foes if you have the ability to avoid or at least escape them. The Eels go rather fast, faster than a walking human in their voidsuit. This means that you will have to run, and obviously, your stamina has limits. You could try to block the Eel into terrain with the help of a heavy object (my go-to one is the Field Generator because with a wrench you can keep it stuck on the ground, mob can't push it, assuming that you've got the right terrain around, and are fast enough), but so far, most of the rocks we've seen are actually full of open spaces, meaning that hiding in terrain is a pretty limited option as well. And I'm speaking of this assuming that you're a Human. Unathi and Dionae are never going to get a chance at escaping it. - They are HORRENDOUSLY POWERFUL. Yeah of course. As stated, you can hardly outrun them, and facing them is nearly suicidal. If alone, or even with one or two friends, you WILL die, if not from the Eel itself, from your wounds (As it will take a while to fly back to the Horizon... Once again, another problem for another time). Here are a few solutions possible, they could be used together too: - Solution one, nerfing them. I... I'm actually not that fond of that solution, I feel like the next ones would be better... But these nerfs could be used to give the Eel a more precise role... Make it much slower, to that it remains as dangerous, but can be avoided by all; make it very fragile, so that it acts as a glass cannon, that can do terrible damage to the careless EVA workers, but that the experienced ones knowing where to look and how to react have a chance; etc. - Solution two, keeping them around a point of interest. Just like how the Hierophant will defend its spot in the Lavalands of your local Baystation-ish server, one way to make the Eel unique, even more interesting, and keep its level of danger might be to make it defend its own little spot. A tile with something it defends (and maybe a worthy reward that could be an incentive to actually face the Eel, like a phoron-superdense rock that would give a full stack's worth of phoron once mined, very expensive Eel eggs, a literal treasure chest, etc.) meaning that the Eel will never go X-tiles away from it and that the players can still run away, and yet have an incentive to not just ignore and stay away from the beast. It's my favorite solution by the way. - Solution three, keeping them for precise sites. Just like how we had the megaspider/megagreimorian on an away-site with the Aurora (yes I know it was played by a player, but my point stands as far as danger level went), HIGHLY dangerous fauna like the Eels would be kept for special spots, precise sites, ones that players can recognize and know that they may have to at least prepare, giving them a chance to properly engage with the beast, or even just avoid the confrontation. While I'm not fond of the Eel in its current state, and so are many other players from what I've seen/heard, I KNOW that there is potential for something really, really interesting.

OKAY. It's been... Way too long and we're sorry about that. BUT, better later than never, yes? Hopefully? Anyways... The team agrees, these are some interesting proposals, and as far as I go, I do enjoy the idea to actually dedicate a space on the wiki to disabilities and such... Anything to help create and flash out characters, all the while enriching the lore is always good! However, because there's a however, we're not so sure about some of the finer details. Thus, we will see about implementing it, but not without checking and perhaps tweaking and changing a few things first. In any case, your application is highly appreciated! Thanks! And sorry again for the VERY late response!

That I can definitely agree with. And, well, I said it and will say it again, as a Xenoarch/Anomalist main, I really don't mind unfair deaths unless it's from something unintended like a glitch or bad roleplay... Like, stepping into the Xenoarcheology Atrium is basically like signing a contract that says that RNGeesus now handles your fate. That and, as a Unathi main, I can always shrug off some seriously ridiculous ammounts of damages so I don't worry about that... However I still believe that a suit upgrade might be needed, beyond a better headlamp (see below.) Also this. The Horizon is still basically in its infancy. The testing weeks are basically over, but I assume that we're still going to see a lot of updates and maybe even changes the moment it drops, and I'd rather wait for these changes to happen first, and for us to get used to it to speak too much about this part... Plus the fact that it's a whole other subject that deserves its own thread... So I'll be brief. Basically, it's just the idea of being so far from the main ship that makes EVA so dangerous currently. The new fauna, despite how brutal it can be, is welcome... However, the risks to have a "slow death" are much higher. Say... That a shark headbutts you in the wrong spot and your lungs have been damaged. On the Aurora, you might have been able to walk back to the station and have a First Responder pick you up once inside, but out there it's not possible. You have to head back to your pod, maybe wait for your miner pals to come back too, cycle in, fly back to the ship, cycle again, and then get picked up. The whole process takes at least up to (extra) five minutes (compared to how it went on the Aurora) which is MORE than enough to make a difference between life and death. The Horizon cannot hear you from your rock unless you're already in your pod with the long range communicator, so calling the First Responder for a rescue is out of the question, plutting aside the fact that they'd need to get on a pod, cycle, fly to the destination, cycle, pick you up, etc. There's the idea of taking a First Responder with you from the get go, but unless you get wounded it's gonna get boring for you, they might not have the tools for the right operations, and at some point, it just turns into a whole expedition (which had this kind of danger level) just for a random anomaly, or some minerals. There's no easy answer to balancing the added lethality of the new EVA, as far as I can see, and once again, now is probably not the right time to try to answer it, maybe in a few weeks when we'll all be used to this. But anyways yeah that's my reasoning behind all of this, and why science, or at least the Xenoarch, should have a suit armor upgrade of some kind. TL;DR: EVA is much more unforgiving on the Horizon, it's less about getting hurt and more about being killed by things that tended not to on the Aurora.

"Xenoarcheologist" and "Anomalist" currently are alternate titles for the Scientist role. Thus they get the same permissions, same expectations, same limits, etc. I believe that it would be for the better, especially with the Horizon on the horizon (laugh, please). Why should we make Xenoarchs an actual role: - The expectations are way different. Xenoarchs and Anomalists are very often either outside, or in their anomalous dungeon. While they can handle RnD, chemistry, and such, they do not have the same skills as other scientists, and neither do they have the time to do their job. I mean, hell, the "alt-title" literally got its own wiki-page, that's how different they are. - A Xenoarcheologist could use access unique to their own role, such as a limited access to the mining department and the mining pods. Not to go out by themselves (because EVA is currently highly dangerous but that's a discussion for another day so going alone is suicidal), but to move with more ease in and out of the department, and on their own. Active anomalies have to be handled fast very often, and needing a miner or someone else from operations to open the door can often lead to unneeded wounds or even death (IE: radiations emitting anomalies). - Access to better EVA gear. I get the balance between voidsuits, and I perfectly understand why the science voidsuit is so miserable... It's not meant for hard work, nor is it meant for exploration. It's used by your local telescientist to not die in case their portal went wrong, or for your local bombmaker to assess the damages of their creation in person. But this makes Xenoarcheology incredibly hard and dangerous. the EXTREMELY LIMITED view range afforded by the headlamp (3 tiles at most) certainly shows its limits in the pitch-black environments of the asteroids around the Horizon, and while the (light) protection against radiations is welcome, the paper-thin armor means that a couple of carps can very well end you if RNG isn't in your favour once they hit you. (See more about that below in the "intricacies" category) - No more confusion about "Scientists" doing X job. A rare instance, and a minor one, but one that happens nonetheless... Since they are the same job, a "Scientist" can leave and do Xenoarcheology. There's nothing wrong with it, since it's all alt-titles... But I've seen a few instances where Scientists expected to do RnD and the likes get shouted at for doing Xenoarcheology, which they were still allowed to do. Separating the two jobs can prevent such confusion. Intricacies, things to tweak and change and not forget about if we ever go on with that: - The role capacity, or whatever it's called. Currently, I'm pretty sure we can have 5 scientists tops, which includes Xenoarcheology. If Xenoarcheology becomes its own role, first, I see up to three players in this role, I've seen this happen quite a lot on busy rounds, but never more than that. Scientists would then have their numbers reduced to 3-4 players tops, I supposed. - "Anomalist" becomes an alt-title for the "Xenoarcheologist" role. - The Xenoarch's "better" EVA gear can be anything. At first, a cheap solution might be mining gear (assuming the Xenoarch role has access to the mining department). They present different advantages and drawbacks... Better armor and lights, lack of resistance to radiations... It's a choice, to make, but I feel like a Xenoarcheologist in mining voidsuit would DEFINITELY have higher chances of survival. The better solution might be the creation of a Xenoarcheology voidsuit, one that strikes a middle-ground between the mining and science one... But that would be for another thread entirely. Just know that, since Xenoarcheology becomes a role on its own, only they have access to it. - As far as access goes, it would be comparable to a Xenobotanist's or Xenobiologist's, with the added (partial) access to the mining department. With this logic, why not giving a unique role for telescientists, bomb-makers or exploratory chemists?: - Lore-wise, I feel like it would represent the slow, and small, but still noticeable growing interest in anomalies and such. The Aurora was a SCIENCE station, the Horizon is an EXPLORATION ship. To quote its wiki page: "While detecting Phoron is considered the primary objective, there also exists secondary and even tertiary objectives in which the crew of the SCCV Horizon must attempt to accomplish - examples of which are investigating potential colony sites for the expansion of the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate and the Republic of Biesel, as well as analysing deep space anomalies to uncover the mysteries of the Orion Spur, and hopefully unearthing additional information on why Phoron exists and why it has such a profound impact within the regions of which it is discovered." - Gameplay-wise, bomb-making and telescience are much less time consuming. On the Aurora, it takes between 30 to 60 minutes to extract a find and bring it back, and I'm not speaking about actually analyzing the finds... On the Horizon, it can take up to an hour and a half (which is WAY too long, but once again, something for another thread.) If people ever agree with such a thing, of course, we would have, then, to see through other thread how it would be implmented, some of the intricacies (IE, the Xenoarch voidsuit if people ever agree with such a concept), but I just want to see if people ever agree about making the Xenoarcheologist an actual role first.

Yes indeed!

Sounds good to me! Also I didn't do anything with Vaurcae because I've NEVER seen one wearing one of these suits, and also the way they wear clothes confuses me. Perhaps later... Or if someone else does that.

Tired of having to wear a tight, unhandy suit that cannot hold your headtails? Annoyed that the only thing between life and certain death (or worse) is a suit that doesn't fit your feline ears? Had enough of having your reptilian snout crushed against a visor? Have no fear! I propose to you, the XENO-FRIENDLY ANOMALY SUITS! To those unaware, the anomaly suits are non-void proof (as far as I know) suits that supposedly protect you from most if not all DIRECT dangers that anomalies could directly pose (besides teleportation), keeping you safe from radiations, bad psionic energies, etc. They are pretty neat! The problem? There's only one sprite, fit for humans, and if you play something else, then... It may look a bit off. Unathi will have their snouts poking out of the helmet, I imagine that the same would happen for Tajaras, and from certain angles, Skrells will have their headtails poking out... And I'm not even speaking of So I decided to fix that and went ahead and edited the suit's sprite: This edit features three new versions of the suit: - The Tajara suit now features a Tajara tail, and little bits on top for the ears! The visor has been changed so that the muzzle can now fit. - The Unathi suit features a Unathi tail and is comparable to the Tajara suit... The main difference being that the helmet appears smoother, flatter. This is for three reasons. One, there are no cat ears to cover. Two, it's to make it stand out and give it a smoother, more reptilian look (?). Three, it's to give more space for horns to be shown! Horns go through the helmet already, so instead of trying to hide them, which would be impossible considering the size of some, why not giving them more space to be visible instead? I'm sure it could be explained with the Unathi version of the helmet offering spots from which horns can go through and around which the suit can be properly closed. - The Skrell suit is basically just like the human suit, although it should cover headtails now. Now let's talk about the technical aspect. Here is the sprite: AnomalySuit.dmi Currently, the suit is actually called "engspace_suit", but I renamed it here. It features the human sprites, the sprites for when the suit is held, or not worn, at least, and the sprite for each species it has been edited for. The suit doesn't have to be cycled to be worn by anyone, I imagined that we could just have the suit have the sprite of the species that's wearing it.

It just feels a tad redundant to me... It feels quite inconsequential (which is probably the point in a way, to not take up too much of people's time), but there I'd argue that we already have something like this: bounties. Sure, nothing wrong is going to happen to the guy who doesn't do his part and send the Scrimblo-4000 from Science to Cargo, so there's no push to actually take part in it, unless you're actively counting on asking things from Cargo later (and even then, I didn't see much players there minding that and still sending you your stuff anyways)... But that's the point. I assume that a considerable part of the people who generally choose to vote Extended is not really there to do their work without having an antag around to interupt them, but rather to have free (and safe) time to roleplay in the more roleplay-orented SS13 server... Discussions in the bar, in the library, getting character to bond with others (or not!) without the threat of a cult trying to take over the station/ship, etc. In short, this just feels like mandatory bounty-filling. It's more of a shore than anything else, and probably would interupt roleplay for those in it, and the job of those who are all about their work too. I guess that a way to make it more interesting would be to have it be more important, bigger, something that would justify interupting people's attempts at roleplay or working their normal jobs... Like a sort of super-bounty... The construction of a sort of prototype machine that requires input from multiple departments, the CONFECTION of a vaccine/cure and distribution of such a thing to a crew that is ACTIVELY fighting a disease outbreak onboard (with various effects that can prove impairing but not actually lethal), etc. Now, it does indeed require more active participation from the player, however, I believe that such thing would still manage to get in that place between calm extended, and actual antag rounds, for the simple reason that the main problem isn't a active player in the role of an antag, but simply a situation. Even then, however, assuming we implement such a thing... I don't know if it would warrant a game mode of its own? That would be like dedicating a game mode to your usual blob, or a vine outbreak... I don't think that it's worth, as a game mode, that is. Such things could still be crew-size-adjusted random events, (take the disease outbreak, for instance, there is an outbreak, at some point in the round, as RNGeesus decided instead of choosing the Blob, for once.)

I agree. While I love the tan uniforms, I think the black ones are more fitting, at least for Security. Makes them look more menacing, probably what you'd most likely want when you're a big company specialized in guns and stuff. (Best case scenario, just give people both options, like on the Aurora)

By the Spirits that is thorought. I'm not too used to you OOCly or your characters, so I can't really rate how you roleplay and such... The most I got is through the relay with Lilli, and while I did find her a tad annoying from the little bits I've seen, she has character, and that's what matter the most to me! Plus in any case, you seem rather serious judging BY THE SHEER SIZE OF THAT APP, so we're off to a very good note. Question time now! 0) That's less about the lore, and more about the transgender aspect since I'm not extremely familiar with its inner workings. Less about your understanding of the lore and more about my understanding of the character's story... there's no wrong answers. Now, IF I GOT IT CORRECTLY, Aeiszk was born, biologically, female, but considers herself a male? I'm going to assume this for the rest of the quesions. (Also, is he... Physically male now? Like has there been an actual physical transition or is it just an identity thing so far?) 1) What's Aeiszk's faith? What does she think of it/how zealous is he? 2) Does Aeiszk have some kind of talent? An education/formation that gives him something special? 3) When was Aeiszk born? Did he live through Contact war? If not, what does he think about it, how important is it to him?

Responses are cool as far as I go, then. 👍

YES!- I mean, good app! I really love Tiuk's little lore you made up, it's great! And the character is interesting enough... Now, let's get to the lore questions right away, shall we... 1) So far I assume that most of Krog's (what a cool name) ideas and opinions, relative to religion but also synthetics and such, are in line with Th'akh's doctrine considering how important the faith seems to be to him. Anything of note, that sort of differs from the norm? Something unique to him and/or his Tiuk(an) culture? 2) Krog's opinion of other Sintas, may they be from other powers, faiths, and origins on Moghes, or even away from the home world, anything noteworthy? 3) Same as question 2, but for species, most notably Vaurcae and Dionae, since these are on Moghes... (Also did he get to meet these in the first place on Moghes?)