Captain Gecko

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?)

These are pretty satisfactory responses, I approve of this app totally!

Hey there! It seems that I'll be the lore-boy mostly handling your app for the time being, and it's pretty much the first time for me so bear with me! I didn't get to roleplay much with you, but the little that I could do with you was certainly enjoyable, thinking mainly of Volvalaad. You seem to be serious and into it, even putting aside roleplaying skills, which is cool... And that app itself is certainly interesting, I know I love Si’akh! Now that's out of the way, the real deal... The lore bits! 1) What's Zezria's Idea of honor, what is it, if she has any? Yes, her name is Guwan, and yes, she spent a good chunk of her life being a thief... Yet, she is still a Sinta, and honor is still something mostly ingrained in their mindset. Is Zezria looking for a way to cope with her actions? Or is it the opposite, and she sees herself with shame? And once again, what's her view on honor in general, does she even minds it (After all, it does happen that some Guwans/Guwandis simply just don't care about honor and such)? 2) Synthetics, AIs, what's her opinion of it? More importantly, how would she react to/act with them? Zezria will surely meet and face a good bunch of synthetics after all... This can extend to people with artificial prosthetics. 3) Does Zezria hold any kind of baggage from Moghes? Anything important to Zezria, something that still matters to this day to her, in Tau Ceti? 4) Zezria's opinion on other Sintas, depending on their origins, is there anything of note? I won't tell you to speak of ALL Unathi depending on their religion or origin because we'd be there forever (but if you're to the task, good luck), but rather, if there's anything noteworthy, the way she'd feel about one particular group or another? 5) Same as question (4) but for other species in general. Take your time. Didn't mention it yet, but so far, your app looks great enough to me!

I appreciate these changes a lot! One question, though, are these just visual changes or gameplay-ish? Like would this have an effect on Dionae then?

My bad, then. The problem still stands for Xenoarcheology, though. Currently there's no way for them to do anything without either someone to drive the Intrepid for them, or a miner to guide them... Which means that they can very easily end up useless on the ship. I'll add that as someone who plays on deadhours, I can tell that this is something that's going to happen a lot to many players. That's my main problem.

My idea is to add a shuttle/pod, just like the one used by mining, not an actual ship (no matter how small it may be) like the Intrepid. As far as I know, miners need to wait for the Horizon to actually fly next to a rock, before heading to it themselves, due to the pod's limited range. In the meantime, the Intredpid seems to be able to travel around mostly independantly. This way, we would have the Xenoarch, without bridge crew, limited to handling smaller sites just like mining, giving them freedom, and a way to do their job (without nescessarily endengering half of Deck 1) without ruining the fun of joining an expedition.

Alrighty, so I've already sent all I had to say on Github, but I'm going to point them out here as well since I'm a only speaking of design matters (and not glitches, such as the Protolathe/Circuit Printers not accepting materials). *** First, the most important to me. In short, Xenoarcheology cannot do its job by itself. Xenoarcheologists, on paper, specialize in extracting finds outside, while Anomalists study these finds (although the two end up doing both part of the job since they are very often without each other), which means that they must, at some point, go out there and dig out their things. On the Horizon, this means leaving the ship and landing on some rock/planet. The problem is that, currently, they cannot do that independantly. The Intrepid obviously needs a pilot, and seems to be more fit for larger expeditions anyways. The only other alternative seems, then, to be to use a mining pod... BUT, the local Xenoarch does not have access to the Operations department, and thus, needs to rely on a miner to reach one of these shuttles in the first place. I do mind working alongside miners, however, in the absence of these people, or at least, absence of miners willing to go out there, the Xenoarcheologist ends up being stuck on station. And I'm not even mentionning the risks of bringing a possibly active anomaly to the Operation departments and needing to carry it all the way to the other side of Deck 1 to finally store it in an isolation room... Needing miners to also leave the Operations department, of course. The best solution, by far, seems to be, simply, to give the science department its own little shuttle/pod to do its job, one that can easily be accessed and lead quickly to the Xenoarcheology department, the same way the mining pods can lead to the smelting room. Until then, giving scientists access to the Operations Department can be a temporary solution, so that a mining pod can be borrowed for their work, if no miner is willing/able to work/share if they are present at all. Issue on Github here: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/issues/13030 *** Secondly, let's speak of the Science Storage room. Located by the conference room, just like on the Aurora, it, however, absolutely doesn't fill the purpose it had to fill back on the Aurora. The point of the Storage room, and reason why we asked for one, was because science needed an area to store the prototypes it created, items it found, etc. (and possibly, somewhere SECURE.) This room, then, also gave new roleplaying opportunities, by turning into an objective for antags, for instance, as an alternative to the Vault. I have made, in the Github issue (find it here: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/issues/13034) a mock-up of a more fit storage room already. *** I don't think that's bad design, I think you guys probably just forgot (no biggie), but there's only nitrile gloves for humans in Science's EVA prep room. You could add Tajara and Unathi-fitting gloves in these excavation lockers, that's how it is on the Aurora, currently, at least. Issue here: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/issues/13033 *** Not the first one to speak of lacking disposals. It seems that it's currently being addressed, I can see new chutes popping here and there, that's good. I couldn't find these areas being pointed out so far, on Github, so I'll had my bit. Deck 1 (The Horizon's equivalent of sub-level), as far Science goes... Is lacking too as far as Disposal Units go. So far I've only spotted one in the firing range. I've proposed multiple spots for extra Disposal Units (https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/issues/13031) throughout the area. *** PS: things barred and in green have been already dealt with. Great job with the fast response, guys.

Been playing Sezrak since September 2019, and it has always been a blast. I love playing this character, and so far, most of what I could get from people is that they seemed to enjoy this overweight lizard's company too. But I never truly asked so... Here we are. What do you think about Sezrak? Anything to say about him?