Naelynn

looks great, except for this part: From what I understand, that means that research would essentially be useless except for money without an RD. This.. it just feels bad to lock a core mechanic behind a command staff player.

I guess I'll write something here so it's not so lonely. I honestly recommend looking at Eric Bayer's history, especially his involvement with Copper. When Bear wants to make a REALLY good character, he can and will do so. +1

Here's something I'd like to mention that I don't see in this thread: Bear is very willing to learn things and fix his mistakes. This can even be seen above in the chat with Cobalt. He looked through the feedback, double checked everything and then replied and adjusted his submission. This is true in the game itself as well. I'm not going to claim that OAIMA is perfect character, but it's a very safe and character to play out. Seeing as it's going to be the first IPC character, it seems fitting that it falls into the 'how do humans compute, beep boop, not make sense' category. Is it a stereotype? Absolutely, is it a safe way to play IPC's that helps the player understand more about them? Yes. I think that's why he chose it. He knows the character concept he chose is basic, and understands that it's going to help him learn to play IPC's better. This to me a very valuable trait in an application that should be taken note of. +1

@Chada1 those things can be one at the same - the idea is to reduce downtime before expedition can happen, and for that the shuttle needs to have workable gear.

One more suggestion that I just thought of: I've been thinking about how to make derelict exploration missions more frequent, and me and @Bear have came up with an idea of 'Expeditioneer' - this is due to the fact that people at round start have duties, and on average the earliest you can get expedition going is 1 hour in... at which point the station tends to be panicking due to antags so it gets cancelled. Expeditioneer team could be a thing that ghosts can opt to call - something like starting a vote for ghosts only. If yes, announcement would be send, and soon a ship would arrive with acceptable hazard gear [something like - Hazard rig + 1 laser rifle + engineering suite + medical suite] along with 3-ish ghosts possessing a new body. Or expeditioneer/adventurer could simply be a role. This is however a more difficult thing to prepare. But I'm putting it out here.

As someone who ghosts very often, it's something I thought about alot. Currently, some derelicts have the possibility to spawn construction drones. These are immensly cool, but have few inherent issues. - 1) The drone has nothing to do. (It's laws are to finish and improve a construction project, a lot of these ships are simply abandoned or suffered catastrophic, irrepaireable damage. Ex: Ramming into asteroids, being a bluespace amalgamation of multiple ships, blob infestation..) - 2) The drone has no one to interact with (Unlike normal drones, they are not lawed against interaction with people. However, if the drone attempts to leave the derelict, it gets bwoinked rather fast. {personal experience} - This is due to the fact that the drone's laws are to improve/finish their assigned construction project, not roam to other projects. ) - 3) The drone is not customized to reflect their surrounding - they always spawn as an NT-branded construction drone, despite coming from Sol/Syndicate/Etc. ships. While this may not inherently break the lore, it is a bit derp-feeling when you're in a syndie base and you're NT branded drone and don't even have a plasma cutter. - 4) Expeditions almost never happen. If you're lucky, maybe there's 1/10 rounds. Probably less. As such, the derelict drone option ends up being a waste of the ghost's time most of the time, with exception of learning engineering skills or drone combat vs clone-pods spawned mobs. That said, I do believe that ghosts could have access to additional ghost spawner options - which is why I was extremely excited to see the recent ghost spawner addition. Here are my suggestions: 1) Derelict Survivors - As everyone else said above. They'd need to have a rev-like device to cause an announcement or something. 2) Bluespace Echo - The thing that happens when Wiz/Ninja gibs themselves by warping into a bluespace inhibitor. [ Random event chance to spawn, add an anouncement that says something like - Bluespace interference has been detected in your area - sometimes no one will take the echo, sometimes people will and that's fine ] 3) Carp Invasion - Ghosts should be able to take over a normal carp during carp invasion. 4) Slime - In xenobiology. Allow a person to take over a slime, and when they feed enough give them the option of mutating into a slime person. Slime people are extremely underutilizied, this would give them a reason to exist outside of wiz's polymorph stick. Only additional slimes would have this option, not the ones at round start - guaranteeing there's someone doing xenobio. 5) Station Pet - Why not have sentient Ian/Colombo/Bones/Bob/Chauncee? 6) Spiders - I don't think player spiders are a horrible idea. Do it. 7) Mining Event Drone - Sometimes there is a mining drone that spawns on the asteroid, let players possess it. Finally: Make Construction Drones useful. Since they are clearly not wanted to come onto NSS Aurora, give them the ability to act as the derelict's self defense system. Namely: 1) Give them a ranged weapon of some sort. Plasma Cutter is ok, but powered crossbow would be best fit. 2) Allow them to pilot exosuits - many derelicts come with Exo's, and this would allow the drones to act as the threat on more benign derelicts.

I agree so much. The vault is literally only Antag-bait now, but the only thing that's worth antag's time in there is [sometimes] rig modules, and safe's contents. Safe cracking is messy and glitchy [sometimes it refuses to open even if you do know how to crack them] and the contents can be anything from mostly useless stuff [race-locked rigs that you cannot use and random Gladius-tier melee weapons that look omega-derp inside a corporate vault] to ridiculously op stuff [Energy Axe]. PLEASE, as it is now it should be accessible with captain/HEAD OF SECURITY [They're Loyalty implanted both, use it] oversight and authorization from a relevant head of staff.

@Aboshedab it appears to me the player complaint has been resolved.

Aight. Will do - the character is put on hold until the changes take place.

Nah, what I was expecting was something along the lines of 'If you cooperate with us and tell us the information we want, I'm going to make sure you will not be harmed and be legally processed. Once your charges have been served you will be free to go' - or anything along those lines. Not a promise of Less violence in the future. But yeah - in my eyes it was purely an ic thing and I mentioned it to elaborate on why dealing with security as an antag is extremely difficult and dangerous. I even said this: Them in this situation being officers who are more than willing to go crazy at drop of a hat. The total kill count of Nightingale in that round has been zero by the way, even the janitor has survived. The detective got a few pecks into the face and was damaged [ipc] but nothing that couldn't be repaired in few minutes in robotics. @Garnascus more more-or-less irrelevant stuff below this line. I havn't given out any information about that because I don't believe it was relevant to Casey Mercer/Naelynn Character/Player complaint. All I remember from the Ahelp is that the person who shot the prisoner [I think thrice?] got talked to. I genuinely don't remember much about it. The only reason I even brought it up in the first place was in a semi-unrelated part of the post that informed the admin that it's not relevant to this forum post - and it was merely to explain why you get so many antagonists who go on to 'gank' security. As far as I can tell, there are three -general- types of antagonists they end up in based on how the situation plays out: Peace/Stealth Antagonists: These will never break regulations, almost always try to help the station to hunt down other antags and generally play as standard employee with access to non-standard tools. Outside the first one-two rounds with each particular gimmick of this variant, there is very little to be interesting about them unless they are supported by a 'Hostile' type antagonist [Another type, listed below] There is a subtype of antags that belongs here because of how similarly they end up for the round overall - Stealth. For these antagonists, you just never saw them effect the round in any way whatssoever, be it because they didn't notice they are an antag, or because they went about their business in such a sneaky way that no one ever found out. On-The-Run Antagonist: These are antags that are plain annoying for everyone. Usually these antagonists think they are roleplaying, but then they do something to make station/security hate them and then there's 90 minutes of chasing a spacial wizard/ninja/REALLY sneeky traitor/etc while they taunt each other over comms and all security does is constantly run around the station in a circle while everyone gets annoyed. Hostile Antagonists: These antags ignore regulations altogether and do whatever they want. If they are missmanaged, they will often just be causing chaos for no real reason, if they are done correctly they are an open and very real threat to the station that the crew can rally against. Sadly, due to security essentially being 'Antagonist Interaction Department', these types of antags very often get into combat with security. And if you don't fall into one of these categories, you've been killed. And if you do, you're probably dead anyway. Hell, I had a peace vox raider round where I literally was under security supervision, didn't steal or harm anyone the entire round and STILL got attacked and then hunted down by securit at about 1 hour 40 mins in. That's simply how the situation is and genuinely unless the entirety of security department is somehow forced to change, or there is an extremely talented HoS holding everyone in line [Khaled] I cannot in good conscience antag without being cruel to security. Why? I don't like playing peace/stealth, and On-The-Run is annoying for both me and everyone on station. ... but all of that is more or less philosophy on how the game plays out and has very little to do with this character/player complaint. If you want to continue this talk so we can meet some middle ground maybe, hit me up on discord @Mogelix over at Naetatolynn#1337 . I'm only going to reply here with stuff that is directly relevant to this character/player complaint from now on.

@Garnascus I'd like to ask you to pass judgement. I don't think me and @Mogelix will be able to talk the situation out due to fundamental difference in our thinking - Mogelix appears to think around emotions and reading intentions, while my posts are structured around trying to provide reasoning and evidence where possible. Seen here: My post explained that the detective rp's was valid, as such I didn't lodge any form of formal complaint about it. My post is a little bit salty after - and that's fine. However, why am I being ascribed stupidity for assuming that security wants to get some information out of the vox during interrogation? There's a lot more I would want to say, but an argument can be had over private dm and doesn't have to be overseen by an admin. Thank you for your work.

...this is an argument? I thought it discussion on a problematic character, but... this is just me being pedantic, Everyone gets what you mean. I'm not going to address most of the points above. Why? Two reasons: 1) Garn has asked us to keep the posts reasonable in length. I have a habit of not doing that when addressing things. 2) Most if not all things I believe were addressed in my previous post. Instead, I would like to do this: @Mogelix - What would you like to see done about mercer to increase your enjoyment of playing with the character? From what I've seen, the following changes should be implemented: 1) As both @Cnaym and @Garnascus said, Mercer needs to have a reason to be on station. I was thinking of several adjustments here. The character would be taking on jobs from https://forums.aurorastation.org/forum/36-syndicate-transmission-network/ . Futhermore, Mercer will primarily try to roll as Merchant, and secondarily as visitor. 2) If the character doesn't get antagonist for the round they join, they will try to 'investigate' to gain information about their current mark instead of cryoing. - This would lead to the character asking reasonably shady questions and looking to interact with people. For example, if Mercer accepts the currently posted Cerberus hit, she would be walking around asking what sort of person Copperfield is and etc. 3) The records should be adjusted. I don't necessarily know how, as I want to keep the idea of a merc that isn't a hit squad going, but I'll try to figure something out. If you have any more suggested changes, I'd like to hear them. Right now I'm staying away from the character to not cause more issues. However, there are two points @Mogelix posted that I do want to address. - Yes, I was surprised it was stepped on. It was in an area with no light, so every officer would have had their flashlight on. The mine wasn't hidden behind anything, it was just placed on the ground next to two welder tanks - another hint something's off. I genuinely didn't expect someone to step on it. I cannot control the actions of others. What was I supposed to do, block access to the mine from both sides with welder tanks to make it even more suspicious? @Garnascus everything below is not relevant for you. I tried to keep it concise, feel free to read it - but it's just me explaining why Antags cannot care for lives of security on Aurora. How about you never operate like that? That sure would make playing as sec against you slightly less toxic and ganky - These two points are both tied into the whole 'Security Lives Don't Matter' ideology that is basically a pre-requisite to playing an extremely dangerous antagonist. After this post I was feeling guilty and tried not to kill people in two rounds I got antagonist characters in: Raider round with Nightingale [Vox raider] and a summoned skeleton minion of a [murderboning necromancer] wizard. ( I don't think the ID's matter, but these should be it - however I might be mistaken: b2s-b980 for Wizard round, b2r-cyZO or b2r-de4r for Raider round ) @Mogelix please read this: In Nightingale's round, the vox was first caught in robotics and hasn't harmed anyone until then. There was a civvie next to the vox as well as an officer that was being repaired by the roboticist. Security opened fire with lethal lasers less than five second after spotting the vox and could have harmed the crew. IN THE SAME ROUND LATER, after the vox escaped medical, it found and blue-grabbed a janitor in maint when it saw sec incoming. SECURITY GUNNED DOWN THE JANITOR (Hostage) WORDLESSLY TO BE ABLE TO SHOOT IT. (Yes it was ahelped) After this the vox was captured and dragged to interrogation. The detective was asking some questions, I was giving somewhat helpful-but-clearly-can-give-more answers. Then I asked him "Detective, Vox deal in deals. What will Vox get from this." Reply? "I will not punch your teeth out." .... Soooo, what the detective was telling me was - You're either going to be HuT or executed anyway, and if you work with me I'm not going to harm you now.... Why the actual fuck would I continue working with you then? Is it any surprise then that my reaction as Nightingale then was to rip off the cuffs and attempt to kill the detective and escape? (And get finally gunned dead by security) Skeleton minion time: Tried to rp over stolen HoS comms, repeatedly say that it's not hostile and will not attack [outright said the phrase - "This one will not attack unless you attack first!" ]. What happens? TCFL Sees my flashlight somewhere EVA and shoot me off screen with gauss thumpers. It didn't matter that I had two guns when they couldn't see if I STILL HAVE THEM BECAUSE THEY SHOT ME FROM OFF SCREEN WITH A WEAPON THAT DOESN'T HAVE A SCOPE. 'Kill it, it's an antagonist.' Reality of the situation is that if openly antagonistic try to rp or even talk around security, they get violently murdered by MOST of security. As little as even hinting about talking on the radio thus HAS to be enough for an antagonist to go ahead and outright maul your face off, because even if you yourself arn't one of the officers that do this, you're calling them in. And no, these two rounds are not an exception. This is par for the course for playing antagonists, and there's nothing to be done about it. What, am I supposed to ahelp security doing their job and stopping threat to station? No. The only way you will get less 'ganking' antagonists is if security is reformed. Until that day comes, I will continue believing that security lives don't matter and murdering them as fast as possible at the slightest sight of danger to my well being before running off from the scene because reinforcements are -always- coming.

Out of these characters I have interacted with Phi Rathens, Maki Midory, Freya Kruger and Mia Frei in the past. Especially noteworthy is Mia Frei whom I had a particularly pleasant interaction as my Corp. Liason. I'll put it in the most blunt way I can: I want Frei for HoS. Thus, +1 from me.

I can agree with almost everything you wrote here. Especially this part is interesting to me: "But we know that characters [...] are all hired and screened employees/visitors who are allowed into this research station, right?" I'd like to elaborate on this point, because there seems to be a misunderstanding here between our comprehension of the word 'Visitor'. As far as I understand it, pretty much anyone is allowed to just get on board of Aurora, as long as they are screened and evaluated beforehand to make sure they are not carrying any dangerous materials or weapons. Just like in real life you might be allowed to walk around the public areas of a military base if you fill a paperwork and get a pat down at the gate by some soldier/officer. While from what I am reading here, it seems to me that in your understanding Visitors are only allowed to be NanoTrasen employees / contractors that happen to be off duty. I'm fairly sure that it's more complex than this, and that's why I'd like you to elaborate on this point a little bit more. Because it's important and it seems to be a rather large part of the issue you have with Casey Mercer's character concept. as seen here: ______________________________ So far there has been only one round where Mercer has been 100% cannon. In that round, the HoP send a station announcement that they are hiring for positions due to critical crew under staffing, and Mercer happened to catch the announcement while aboard Odin and eventually served as a temporary Sec. Officer. I'm not sure if it was extended round, but it doesn't matter because there was no antag interaction anyway with this character. However, I concede that having 1 canon round out like.. what.. 30? played on this character probably isn't the best thing possible. The reason why Mercer is a cryo-on-round start character is for several reasons. They may not be good reasons, but they are reasons nonetheless. - The initial gimmick of Mercer was 'Always Antag' character. This gimmick requires some ability to predict the future to not have to cryo on round start, but sadly I don't have that ability. - When I was playing Aimee, I know that I had gotten in trouble for cryoing on round start with an important job [Roboticist] because it was taking up a round slot for people. ( Unrelated note: I did that because I don't like sharing the workplace. Right now Aimee is basically only played if there is no roboticist at all. ) - When Mercer was played a few times, I realized there was an issue that security wouldn't ever IC know that this person is dangerous and this didn't give them a fair chance. - This I chose to adress by the records warning security of the fact that the character is a potential threat and should have an eye kept on them. - I do agree that Mercer is often 'Gimmickless' and more oriented towards 'Chaos' antagging. The reason for this is the gameplay limitation -> The character at round start requires me to scavenge for supplies super fast and then try to track security without having access to their communications or location. I try to evaluate the risk of everything in my head as I go, which often leads me to not thinking through any proper gimmick to base the round around - and by the time I get to captain's office I'm usually playing reactively [take opportunities to do things] not proactively [Drive a narrative around your character]. - That doesn't mean the character doesn't try to change their approach. When I started, I used Esword-Emag-ForceGloves-AgentID traitor 'build' exclusively - while this is a very good build over all, it also doesn't have much power in driving the story. - Over the course of time, Mercer has been played with voice changer, chameleon kit, without esword, without force gloves, without emag, with suicide implant, with hacked ai module and recently, with a mine and with sabotaging crew records. Each time trying to fit something a little different on the 'baseline formula' I will weave this into the following points a bit more. ______________________________ I'd like to address this piece of text out of order before we get to the rounds themselves. If the concept of this character where you start with nothing comes off as .. uh.. douchey? arrogant? Then I'd like to apologize. That wasn't the intention. This line was taken from my command app, where I've specifically addressed the point that I will not play command characters as traitors. Yes, command traitors can be enjoyable and very dangerous, but I don't want that sort of rp from them. ______________________________ The code diving was my attempt at understanding the game better, to learn and improve - something I always strive to do. Everyone makes mistake, no matter how much they try not to. That goes for me as well - and I think this is important to acknowledge. As for the formulaic antaggery... you're not wrong. It is a formula -> Get tool belt -> count minutes, if security briefing/suit up is complete, wait until maintenance sweep is done. If not, steal sec void suit -> try to frame a shaft miner as breaking into captain office by changing your ID card to their name and job -> copy captain id access -> get both captain's guns and headset -> try to think of something interesting to do. Here's where I would like to ask you something back... What have you learned from this formula? You know it just as well as I do at this point. Why not make it a point to go 'set up the void suits' like many other officers do, and if you notice them missing report it? Why not make it a part of your patrol? It would make sense for a dutiful officer to check on their limited EVA gear? What does not having access to EVA gear mean: - Hull breaches become super dangerous. Okay, let's stay away from vented areas. - Explosives are a hard no-no, as is fighting near them due to reason above. Avoid combat around welder tanks too. - If the area only lost breathable air but not pressure, a gas mask + oxygen tank + armory armor vs the antag's weapons is way better than a void suit anyway. Hell, the most basic thing would be: "Hey guys, did someone take the security void suits?" "No?" "We have a thief and they want to prevent us going EVA. Ai, watch high security locations with EVA access like the bridge." or the bridge... or maybe the bridge, because it's literally the only important location with easy EVA access without changing Z-levels or having access to airlocks. Hell, you could report it, have code raised to blue because you know something's up and man the camera console and watch the important areas. The part of the formula where I enter captain's office is the most vulnerable moment, because if someone activates bridge lock down, I'm stuck inside because I cannot destroy blast doors easily. There is one more part that could be considered Formulaic - the way Mercer often raids the armory. Mercer will almost always only take weapons and sometimes grenades. Why? Because there simply is too much armor to fit into the lockers in a reasonable amount of time. So you're not losing your protection. As for the weapons... There are literally four departments in the game capable of fitting you with a large assortment of weapons, yet security will, as a rule, NEVER ask for help for some unknown reason. All guns got stolen? Kay, scientists are literally breathing down our throat, ready to give us their amazing modular lasers if we ask them. Or maybe we could ask medical for syringe guns and a custom sleep mix that would be even more powerful than the HoS's tranq rifle. Or maybe we could go to engineering and have them build us some flamethrowers and borrow their suits and cycle them into atmos suits to be impervious to fire. Or maybe we could just order new guns from cargo. ______________________________ Next point before I get to the rounds themselves: Surely NT wouldn't allow in someone on a watch list. This specific point I'd like to address with an example. @kyres1 's assistant, Akyniy Idowu [or however you spell it]. This character in their records is ALSO on an official watch list, and is often promoted to roles like Bridge Assistant. And that's a character played by a synth lore developer. So, yes, NT would indeed hire character that are on an official watch list. The official watch list is supposed to be warning for ISD: "Hey, if something weird's going on, considering looking into this person". ______________________________ I actually remember this round, because it got to me. And literally the only thing I remember from it is this exact moment. I couldn't tell you anything else, but the general vibe I had from this stuck with me. Because it was the round where I decided that security should only ever be talked with if they are not an immediate threat. I will try to talk with other departments first, but not security. I've played enough antagonists to where I now simply do not trust security personnel to not try to screw me over in some way. After that moment I was thinking back to all the times I got interrupted while having a chat bubble, ran down by officers, or betrayed when trying to strike a deal as Nightingale (raider/merchant). In that particular round, my state of mind on this was bad enough to where I think I would have killed you regardless of what you wrote, short of 'Wait, can you explain what you are doing here' or 'I surrender'. Was this the best possible solution for the situation? Hard to say. Was it a good mindset the handle the situation? Hell no. The moment happened exactly as you described. Mercer busted in through the door, and headed for the void suits, when suddenly, there's an officer. I remember opening my uplink and looking for an esword while typing an uhh or umm or something like that. When I got the weapon, I started paying more attention again, and took a step towards you. And right here is where I believe I made a mistake. I should have told you to stand down and lit the sword. At that moment, if you pull a gun, I cut your head off. If you talk into radio, I can't know what you're saying and I'm not risking my hide to be killed by a squad of officers - I'm cutting your head off. If you pull a baton, I'm cutting your head off. That's how it should have been handled - .. but it wasn't. And that's the problem. I don't know if you actually talked into your radio or if it was just emoted, because in that round in particular I didn't really care. Sad reality of situations like these is this: Security is there to imprison/kill the antag. Being seen breaking into a high security location like security eva would have meant at minimum 10-15 minutes of brig time and confiscation of my traitor gear [I think I had an emag] + probably my tool belt and insulated gloves. Even now, when I've calmed down a little bit with the approach that 'security lives don't matter' I still would not let you live if you pulled out any form of weapon or talked into your radio. I couldn't care less what the communication was, because I can't hear it and have to assume it's call for reinforcements. I will actually be addressing very similar situation in round 3. ______________________________ I'll split this into two parts - part 1 being directly responding to your post, and part 2 being counterpoints. Part 1: Response I appreciate that you acted out not seeing the grey backpack, and I thought that maybe I can stealth away secretly, alas, I changed my mind based on what I was seeing after considering my situation. - Before you came into the captain office you held the laser rifle in only one hand. After you entered my sight range, to made it a point to wield the rifle and clearly imply 'I am not here to talk' to me. Once again, my whole outlook that 'security lives don't really matter' when I'm an antag rears it's head here. - I was equipped with [ I believe, this was a while back, might be wrong ] two ranged energy weapons and a esword without force gloves. Believe it or not, the Skrellian void suit offers better protection against bullets and WAY better against lasers than security void suit. It is however very vulnerable to melee, unlike security void suit which is basically only good vs melee. If I let you pass by me and not attack with melee the second I can I will significantly lower my own odds of winning. - Because I was unfamiliar with how chameleon projector works [was my first round using it] I didn't know you have to scan an item to turn into that item, so I was a random bag in middle of the room. Furthermore, I fumbled my first attack because as it turns out you have to first disable the chameleon and then attack if you wish to attack, you cannot attack directly from it to break it. - Unlike loyal personnel, antagonists get murdered by a single shrapnel/infection/internal bleeding. We do not have access to a medbay full of people willing to heal us. Every single wound will come back to bite us later on into the round, every single combat is lethal because out of first aid via trauma/burn kits and chems, there's basically nothing we can do to fix ourselves after a wound. I cannot count the amount of rounds where my character gets absolutely destroyed by a dumb infection from a stray laser shot or gets worn down and dies due to a single shrapnel in something silly like left hand. Shrapnel especially is stupendously dangerous - not only causing haloss damage on movement but actually triggering bleeding if you ignore it long enough. Because of this, antags first approach to a potential combat situation will almost always be 'Get rid of danger while putting yourself at as little risk as possible.' And oh god don't get me started on if you're a hostile solo ipc - you cannot even repair yourself whatsoever. - Sadly I cannot know if you're giving me a chance or if you genuinely didn't see me. : ( Part 2: Counterpoint - You are a security officer, bound to follow and enforce corporate regulation. Every single training you ever received teaches you that your teammates are your greatest asset. So.... you hero-charge in completely alone after violating regulations to steal a suit. [I'm relying on information from your own post here, I don't know if officers can normally take the skrellian suit.] - Mercer and Mutema have played multiple times before round 1 mentioned in this post, but I wasn't operating on 'Security lives don't matter' then. - Security officers come equipped with tear gas grenades. Your Ai told you that there's a perp in there. Why not throw it? - Out Of Character, from my experience, there are two characters that you can borderline mind control whenever you play an antagonist. Lin Dislioth and Berko Mutema, without exception, will always take a direct line towards a hostile as soon as their location is known. This was later a cause for an adaptation from me that was seen in game 3 with the land mine. If Mercer is formulaic and predictable, so are you. ______________________________ This round happened just this morning [for me], so it is very fresh in my mind. - If an admin wants to check the round's logs, it's game ID b2q-buMC . At round start I managed to collect my kit faster than I've ever done before so I decided to rush the void suits before security is even finished taking things from their lockers. Knowing that officers like to patrol maintenance, I decided to adapt from previous rounds and instead of getting the usual, I opted for Agent card -> emag -> land mine opener. After entering security/eva/engineering maintenance, I placed a land mine [I did not obscure it with the welding tank to make sure people have a chance if they pay attention] and moved a secondary welding fuel tank next to it and was preparing to do the usual security void suit shenanigans when I saw a maintenance drone walking by. I emagged the drone, and seeing how it was still early into the round I didn't want it to do anything lethal, so I ordered it to destroy all lights and only kill if it feels threatened. I proceeded with the void suit thefts, and as I was leaving towards security briefing room via maintenance I heard a triple explosion and the maintenance vented. [Mine + 2 welder tanks]. I was honestly a little surprised that someone walked onto a non-hidden mine that had an additional welding tank parked next to it. Later I was informed in LOOC that placing mines this early into round is considered bad form and shouldn't be done. After that I proceeded to change my ID card to that of the only shaft miner on shift. This is important and will come up later. I proceeded to break into the captain's office and empty everyone's accounts and wipe the crew manifest. [Later I got asked by @TheSleepyCatmomto not do so again since it is inconvenient for people joining the game] Then I fumbled around for a while, trying to figure out what exactly to do. I navigated down to cargo via maint and looted the warehouse and after that up to engineering to check on if there are any more drones to emag [you can request them to move to some area, and usually they will obey the request.] along the way I got spotted by an engineer who reported the presence of a miner in unusual gear in engineering. ---------- Here we will momentarily be taking a break from the recap of the round and skipping over to something I was only informed of after the game - retroactively - by @Seeli complaining on discord. The miner being impersonated was assaulted by security and was harmbatoned long enough for the baton to run out of charge. I was informed that your character was present and only intervened after you accidentally got hit. As far as I was informed, the miner was not resisting and was wanting to cooperate to clear up the misunderstanding. Why is it okay for your character to condone abusing the crew and potentially inflict lethal amount of damage [harmbatoning long enough for it to run out of charge]? I actually don't really care if you were asking the officer to stop, the officer was clearly out of line, and you should have prevented the harm of [if nothing else] your willing prisoner. This is all second hand retelling, and it is possible I tagged the wrong person - if this is as such, I will edit this post and correct the tag. ---------- After this I have navigated over to armory and looted it to give myself a fighting edge in case combat does happen, as well as removing ions to protect my [now] two hacked maintenance drones. (one of which was pointedly ignoring me after I emagged it, but w/e) As I was disposing of the armory gear, or soon after, I am not sure which, Ai Apex played by @Pratepresidenten arrived on station. I immediately decided that the Ai should be subverted and proceeded to get back inside via engineering airlock near engine and drone control. Just as a matter of check to see if there is more drones and I see engineer screwing around with the drone control console. I pull out a gun, make sure to use show-held-item and ask them to step away from the computer. They do so, I hide the gun, and they immediately call for aid on public comms. This was a second [ and soon third ] kill of the round that could have been much, much more bloody on my part. Being obviously put in dangerous situation, where I don't know if there are security officers with lethal bullets in their .45's [I left all ammo inside armory] about to come sprinting in, I opted to kill the engineer instead of letting them follow me around and keep revealing my location on radio. [I'm sorry, if your first reaction to a clearly hostile AND ARMED person being in the same room as you is to provoke them, I'm going to assume you will continue going out of your way to screw me over. This too has happened too many times for me to remember]. As soon as I open fire, a second engineer in an engineering voidsuit opens the maintenance door. This engineer sees a person with a laser gun in captain's voidsuit shooting another engineer. How do they react? Run away and call for aid? Back off slowly? Maybe ask me to stop? ... Nah, get a welder, light it, and hit the antag. I managed to pick up syndie force gloves and a combat medkit from cargo warehouse, so I bought myself an esword with spare tc - and it came in handy here in the melee confrontation. Sadly, that upped my direct kill count to three this round. Kill 1) Someone stepping on a non-hidden mine. Probably shouldn't have been this early [less than 5 minutes into round] but... I can't really control this. Kill 2) I'm not sure if the engineer had to die, but from my experience if I spared them it would have made my situation a billion times worse. Kill 3) Self defense, was being under attack. After this, I examined myself, patched up any wounds there were and navigated into engineering sublevel to eva-path towards command bunker and thus towards ai. [Somewhere around this point in time I made an rp-stop in medical and handed a smoke nade to the actual miner whom I was impersonating. Or maybe it was earlier, I genuinely don't know when it was] Apex caught me before I could enter the core. He was clearly not happy with me, and claimed that I cannot be the captain because I am not a captain on the crew manifest. I asked if he would recognize me as captain if I was on crew manifest and I received a positive answer, so I went ahead and modified the crew manifest to be as such. Apex then let me into his core where I gave him a law that I thought would be funny with the amount of drones going around. - All beings that are not present on the crew manifest are to be adressed and treated as maintenance drones. All actual maintenance drones are to be treated as captains and must be assisted. This law says nothing about harming the crew, and I hoped it would create interesting situations instead of something silly like 'I am the only crewmember, kill all non-crew' or whatever. After double checking that apex's laws are updated, I moved out of the ai core and towards command teleporter where I fumbled around for a while trying to figure out how exactly I want to get into telecomms to investigate why exactly radios arn't working. Apex meanwhile solved the issue, but at that point since I had set up the teleporter I figured I might as well take it and figure things out from telecomms entrance. The 'small' chance for teleporters to backfire triggered, and I was phased into engineering sublevel and had my right foot shattered and external bleeding. I patched up what I could with the scavenged medical supplies, but until round end my foot was going to be slowing me down. I navigated towards robotics, considering cutting off my own right foot and replacing it with a prosthetic, because it honestly is way easier than trying to convince a doctor to fix my foot without having to be paranoid about them sedating me and handing me over to security. I walked over into RnD because I wanted to check if there was a scientist there, and... honestly randomly did science for a bit while I ordered them to repair my hacked drone. While there I either was given or had on my own, don't remember, the brilliant idea to go to medical and use splints instead of cutting off my own foot. So I ask the drone to be my bodyguard and move to medical, only making small replies to the people while getting medical splints and applying them to the broken bone. After leaving medical, I run into an IPC - Gladiator - Detective I think. He asked me to surrender and implied violence and that he is not letting me pass. I stood there, in a really vulnerable position in middle of a hallway trying to get the ipc to NOT do that and prioritize protecting his crew over killing the antag. [Because at this point Apex and his cyborgs were going full gestapo on enforcing that all "maintenance drones" are to repair the station or be terminated for not following their laws] After some time, the detective agreed and mercer exited the round by raiding the vault while walking by it, grabbing extra credits that were inside and a hazard rig, installing a jetpack and an energy carbine module into it, looking around for a bit, finding that there's a Necropolis Liason in his office, throwing the hazard rig to them and leaving the station via research shuttle before finally ghosting on the derelict because crew transfer was underway anyway, so it was round end. [And the ghosting was ahelped just to be double sure, however I don't remember who accepted the ticket] Did I have a clear plan and/or gimmick what to do from roundstart? No. Absolutely not. Did I go out to murderbone people? No. Did I go out with the intention to just cause chaos? I think so, I think that's how it definitely was in retrospect. Did I do nothing at all for the entire round? False, I highly disagree with this. I think I was very active as an antagonist, just without a clear narrative to follow. - This in itself is not necessarily a downside. Because Mercer's code of conduct essentially is 'get all the goodies', I tend to have a reason to stop by alot of the station's departments and try to involve more crew. - Departments visited this round: Security [Armory and EVA], Bridge [Captain office, Main bridge, research shuttle], Medical [General Treatment and sublevel], Cargo [Warehouse], Engineering [Drone control, engine room hallway], Science [RnD] Oh yea, and I shot some holo carps chasing down people around in RnD. ______________________________ Phew that was a long post. Hopefully I managed to convey my thoughts across. If you have any questions or feedback, please post it here or contact me on discord at Naetatolynn#1337

The application looks solid to me, and I've never had issues with Nienna. I'm pretty sure everyone has had the same experience with Finley - literally always appreciated to see 'er. +1

Right... didn't know that part. I'll go over it.

I support Cnaym's app. Why? He seems responsible, calm and able to work under pressure. He understands the game and is capable of defusing situations. I firmly believe it would be benefit the server if he becomes a moderator.

BYOND key: Naelynn Character names: How long have you been playing on Aurora?: My byond account was created on 29/10/2017 and Aurora was the first server I played on. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: I believe the station needs more IAA players. Why did you come to Aurora?: Others servers are too.. dumb? Is that a good word? There is not a lot of reasoning to why people do things, they just do because 'lmfao wouldn't it be funny to spam *farts* while killing people with chainsaw?' Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: Yes. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? Yes - I have recieved a warning for botched nuke-ops round. Here is the complaint thread: Edit 27/7/2019 - there currently is a character complaint against my account, please take it into consideration before proceeding with the whitelist: Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is, and should be about: Roleplay is process that requires two or more parties to initiate. [You cannot RP alone] It's an activity of acting out different characters for the purpose of enjoyment for all parties involved. Thus, by my definition, if only one party is enjoying the 'RP', it is no longer considered RP. This definition always drives me to try to improve. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: 1) Give direction and help with role play. 2) Make sure in game interactions are not driven completely off the rails. 3) BE RESPONSIBLE for their department. [Lives of their people, equipment etc.] What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: Help new players learn the roles I am capable of teaching. Be a role model player. Leading by example. Being whitelisted means your job comes with a bit of authority that you don't have - and that means you have to be responsible. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau ceti and how it affected your character and their career? Tau Ceti is a region that's currently in something of a pickle. Multiple situations causing distress to citizens of Biesel - Unathi Exiles, Aut'Akh situation, the semi-recent war with Vaurca just to name a few. Many people are worried because of this - one such example is my miner/TCFL character Sabael - signed up to help people survive, to protect others. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Internal Affairs Agent, RD? Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking.: Internal Affairs Agent / (Nanotrasen Liaison) - Katherine Thorne - Shell IPC Character concept: Edit 23.07.2019: Curator, Research Director, Zeng Hu Frame Character concept: How would you rate your own roleplaying?: about 6.5 /10 ? I can definitely do better. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Yes. Have you familiarize yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yes. Extra notes: I am a fairly notorious antagonist player, and I'm worried this might influence the application negatively, so I'd like to address it here. I mostly play off station antagonists, with the exception of traitor. I do not plan to have traitor enabled on any command characters, and this everyone is able to see for themselves in game: My 'traitor main' character is Casey Mercer, a VISITOR/ASSISSTANT with 1 useful loadout item [Webbings]. If I wanted to powergame, I could roll Aimee [Roboticist] as traitor, or Vale Rigby [Sec. Officer] or VRS [Xenobiologist]... but I don't. I like the fact that my traitoring comes with a little extra challange of starting with no access or tools whatssoever. As such, head of staff traitor with so much access, authority and equipment would be... kind of meh really. I even go as far as to state in my security/employment that Mercer is on an official watchlist and is a very dangerous person to have on board as well as stating that the character is a solarian merc. Like, all the red flags possible. Thank you for reading through all this, and thank you even more if you decide to post your opinion. Please be harsh with your assessments, I can take critique. It's the best way to improve.

I'm reading the post now, and I do play engineering. In fact, it was the department I started SS13 with on aurora. The portable pumps on main level don't fill properly and EVERYONE knows this. Either 1) Fix atmospherics on round start so shit actually works or 2) accept that people will fix it for you.

There's a piece of counterplay available to faxing for ERT - if you destroy a bluespace transmitter in tcomms faxes no longer work. However, swiping for ert works 100% of the time, and EBS is so rarely used that I don't even know if destroying the transmitter does something to it.

Fair point. Fair point, I didn't know that. Thank you for teaching me!

Okay, so I was basing that on my irl experience with volunteer based governmental organizations. More specifically, I live in a somewhat small city that doesn't have enough money to have a professional fire department - as such, they run a volunteer based organization where people have to have a job as their main income, and they get very little money from actually being firemen. My family happens to live right across the street from the fire dpt. so as you might expect we have a lot of them as friends and get to know stuff about how it works. - They have regular training sessions, and while mostly anyone can join the volunteer force, there are still filters for incompetence. - This means that while they are not expected to be nearly as good as a professional fire department, they are still expected to be competent and carry all the same responsibilities as normal fire dpt. People's lives are at stake, and if they fuck up they are held just as liable as a pro firemen would be. - Their main income is their job, while the volunteer work is secondary. - While the term 'weekend warrior' may come to mind here, the way it works irl is different. Instead of working for a day or two for TCFL, and rest of the week for NT, they have an alarm system and their employers are aware of it. If an emergency happens, they are expected to drop their job on the spot and come running to their post as fast as possible and get ready for deployment. This is co-ordinated based off how far from the fire station the volunteers work and what's the expected time to arrive at the fire station by central emergency system operators [basically 911 operators] who select the people who can at this moment respond the fastest. - When the volunteer is in a place where an accident happens they are expected to assist and organize the situation in an attempt to prevent further harm.- They are not expected to dive in headfirst undergeared, but they are expected to know what to do in emergencies and save lives where possible. In fact, if the dpt. knows that it's where their co-worker works, they would even bring an extra set of gear for said additional volunteer to assist on the spot. However, they wouldn't bring extra firemen suits and gear for random untrained people because if those people could handle it, they wouldn't be called. Furthermore, they would be held liable for throwing an untrained person into a harm's way - which opens an untold amount of lawsuits against the city and themselves. - They have all access, as far as real life is concerned. - While obviously they cannot have keys to every single door on the planet, they are given governmental right to breach any door,wall or window required to extinguish the fire and/or save lifes of people trapped inside and/or handling any crysis which they are called to handle. NanoTrasen would probably want to avoid unnecessary destruction of their property from Lgn.'s trying to get to places without putting crew at risk, so the easiest way is to give access. Also, if a Lgn. steps out of line, there's so much money in it for NT from sueing the Republic of Biesel. - If a firemen force is given all access, please explain to me why a military force wouldn't. Few additional notes. - TCFL is seemingly based on the French Foreign Legion, with it being a viable way for immigrants to gain citizenship with Republic of Biesel for serving in their military. The FFL is selective with it's process, but the requirements are basically: don't be an international criminal, and be physically healthy. TCFL seems to be working on a very, VERY similar basis. FFL is considered to be an ELITE ARMY FORMATION despite being made literally only of volunteers [no draft whatssoever]. This is because of the grueling training it puts it's soldiers through. TCFL seemingly operates similarly,

- Undefeatable = actually giving ert them weaknesses to abuse unlike now where they have really fooken good protection all 'round. Yeah. Sure. - You said it yourself, response teams are meant to end the rounds in one way or another, so why is one treated as a joke by the community and the other as serious business? Like it or not, but as far as the community is concerned, TCFL is a joke. If you have more than 4 legionnaires, there is not enough weapons to stock them proper on everything they want. If you have less than that, you're not enough in numbers to do anything without SEVERE robustness on your part. - This rework's major purpose is to actually make TCFL feel like an ARMY. I can't stress this enough - they feel like a peasant crusade, they are the laughingstock of the station, THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE ACCESS TO THE SECURITY DEPARTMENT. A TCFL Team can be defeated by a SINGLE MAINTENANCE DOOR. [Like it happened to me when I was solo TCFL into Kyres's Ninja. I got locked in bridge maintenance just as crew transfer landed. No ai, one command staff who refused to get me out. - It was the round where Odysseus teleport+slurped you.] The reason why ERT ends the rounds in a heartbeat is BECAUSE OF THEM BEING TOO WELL ROUNDED - Too good all-round armor, too good selection of all types of weapons, too large customization of gear. -> Proposed rework adresses this - giving each type of trooper a powerful but clearly defined kit along with a HUGE WEAKNESS in their armor. Once again: Engineering trooper gets melted by lasers, medical by bullets, security by non-lethals and leader's weakness is that his rig's stats are only that of a hazard rig so it's possible to overwhelm even without best kit possible. UNLIKE HOW THINGS ARE NOW WHERE THEY HAVE NO WEAKNESS FOR THE ANTAG TO LOOK FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE. - If you don't like that ERT is a 'win button' you should SUPPORT this rework, not decry is because it actually gives antags a chance if they play correctly, unlike now. When I was making this I was worried I was making ERT -TOO WEAK- because I've been playing a copious amount of antags now and I've already had plans how to deal with re-worked ert. two mechs capable of targeted teleportation (through walls, even) - False, there is one teleporter. Furthermore, mechs are instantly deleted from the round by a single ion shot because emp enables maintenance protocols even when they are disabled in the menu. A naked bald on oxycodone and hyperzine is scary - Reminds me when there was a bwoink that I should not hand out rigs to officers to deal with space bears, that an assistant with a crowbar and no armor can take one down. Maybe they can, but rp wise it make absolutely no sense. Why would, for god's sake, a military rescue force give guns to the people they are trying to keep out of harm's way? FURTHERMORE, how the fck are you proposing they get them to the station's crew, when TCFL armor is NOT VOIDPROOF and the TCFL shuttle doesn't park next to an airlock. I genuinely want an explanation on how you imagine this should go. They're not that underwhelming - Once again, the easiest way to delete TCFL from a round is to close them in command maintenance. Done, they're out of the round. Their access is beyond pitiful. It's outright laughable, a joke. Additionally, let's talk about their guns. Thumpers are good, which is why my rework proposes to build them upon thumpers, and not blasters, why? Blasters have horrible projectiles. The one time I saw them used I was the antag and I genuinely couldn't tell I was being shot at until my health dropped to red and I double-checked chat. They are tiny balls that move very fast and have no impact. Thumpers are loud and allow people to actually react to them proper. The numbers don't matter if the gun feels this bad. And there are only 2 thumpers to bring. Okay, please give me an ic reason that justifies this. Here's my arguments, IC, why they should. - They are the MILITARY FORCE OF THE COUNTRY YOU'RE IN. You do not say no when they come knocking, if you want to do business in that country. - They are only called when they should RESCUE the crew from hostiles. The crew that is being put in danger. If they want to get somewhere, it's probably where danger is. You don't want your crewmembers getting shot so the soldiers can get somewhere... AND THEN GET TRAPPED WHEN THE CIVVIE INEVITABLY GETS SHOT BY THE ANTAGS. - Not every round has an AI. - The most valuable and important things NT would want to protect are in high security areas - command, captain's office, armory, SAT, all that jazz. If NT wants to protect those things from hostiles, they will give access to TCFL so they can keep those things safe from hostiles. - NT would like to avoid damage to the station caused by soldiers trying to do their job. [As things are now, TCFL will just destroy the doors when they can't get somewhere, because OF COURSE THEY WILL. THEY'RE NOT ABOUT TO PUT CREWMEMBERS IN HARM'S WAY.] If this was a mechanic it would change a lot. Alas, it is not. Furthermore, it makes very little sense to insert untrained civilians directly into a military operation. Even if the said military is volunteer based, they still have weekly trainings and have been preparing for these scenarios for years.

THANK YOU. So why exactly is it that when call for help is sent and TCFL is sent in, they are -supposedly- to bring extra weapons to hand out to the crew? THEY HAVE RIGS, WHERE ARE THEY GONNA CARRY THEM? MORE TO THE POINT: Quoting DIRECTLY FROM THE WIKI: "4) Don't ask incoming Legionnaires to give you weapons or gear when they're coming in. You can help in your current job by doing that job - or staying out of the way unless asked." https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Tau_Ceti_Foreign_Legion I would -REALLY- appreciate if people who are ignorant of what the server rules regarding ert/tcfl would stop butting in without prior research on what those organizations are. Furthermore, I would ALSO appreciate if people realized that response teams are sent in to PROTECT CIVILIAN LIVES. So it definitely makes a lot of sense to give those same people weapons and send them at the antagonists without any training, yeah. /s

Okay, help me out here. What do you call an armed force that lends its services for money and is not subjected to any government?