kyres1

NCV Aurora AKA “Bruh whos gonna CODE this” the suggestion Setting summary : The Aurora and its crew moves to a fully mobile ship setting, with all the benefits it can gather from it. Why tho? What’s wrong with the current selected NBT proposal? For the most part we can explore the same ideas (like mobility, a changing setting, and a fluid exploration system) through a ship setting. A colony ship, as cool as it sounds, runs into several problems, the largest of which being the “persistence,” of which we have yet to actually successfully work around even in the idea department. Considering it has been quite a long time since the initial suggestion, I still have yet to hear of any specifics about how we intend to handle things as critical as persistence, antagonists, or even how the departments will change outside of xenobiology. To continue on that, we should honestly not be trying to bend the gameplay and rework every single department. It will simply take far too long and it is far too much effort on everyone involved to rework every single department to fit a completely separate purpose, and have a month of effort learning it squandered at the end of it as it rotates. Lore TL;DR on lore: Shockingly different from baystation. We go wild with the lore here, and the ship is effectively the flagship of a megacorporate fleet dedicated to finding phoron. It is super duper powerful and carries the very best of the best, and its presence generally marks an important event of its own despite its size. Specifics can be found below. The optimal lore change Right now our setting is very generalized, with no specific overarching goal to pursue mostly because we are unable to pursue much literally as we’re immobile. “Phoron research” and “mining” is about the best our station can really do, and it was chosen for a reason. I intend to see the same reasoning used to its best in a new setting, so here we go. The ship, the NCV Aurora, is the flagship of the NanoTrasen corporate fleet. It is unique in that it willingly welcomes the presence of all six megacorporations alike, as its initial purpose is to work towards a goal that all megacorporations are after. This goal, of course, is finding a new source of phoron to be seized by NanoTrasen specifically so that the market does not collapse in the coming years. As the galaxy would be plunged into chaos if this happened, this is essentially the most blanket and arguably good goal that we can get in my opinion. It would be apparent as the ship’s prime directive and everything it does is secondary to this. It is not alone in this hunt, so it has an excuse to deviate from its mission for secondary goals (such as diplomatic missions, hunting other ships, going to specific places, etc.) Every megacorporation has their stakes on the NCV Aurora, and every department generally sees the best of every megacorporation. While it’s under a NanoTrasen label, it may very well share ownership between them all. Expect Necropolis security, Hephaestus robotics and engineering, Einstein engineering, Zeng-hu medical, with NT in command and sprinkled everywhere in between alongside Idris. Why a flagship? Won’t the players be able to screw themselves over easily with canon choices, and freedom in movement? Being a flagship is an important factor here. It will be our excuse for shoving the players directly into major galactic events, and basically making their journeys famous. Rather than just being some dumb old station with disposable captains, the players become something akin to Kirk, and the ship becomes something akin to his Enterprise. Everyone’s opinion matters on any given subject, and their presence on board the most advanced, famous, and impactful vessel in known space would give them significant leverage in the long run. Contrarily, the players themselves would not be able to simply run rogue one day on extended and screw over the fun for everyone else. A central command heirarchy will still be in place where lore developers can reel in and guide the hand of the players in the event they do not want to take control, or their decision is exceedingly fucking stupid. For absolute maximum freedom, it would be best to cut any communications to an all-powerful central command and have players mostly have to resort to nearby resources in the event of emergencies. This way, player majorities can choose really risky decisions. For example, you are stuck in Dominian space. There is one NanoTrasen asset nearby, and fifty Dominian fleets. Do you have the balls to roll the dice on a distress beacon, and lower your shields? How far can the players specifically travel within a shift? Nominally they would be unable to leave a system’s radius worth of stuff and would automatically default to a random point in the radius’ grid squares to simulate moving across canon rounds. Who decides where the ship moves from area-to-area, and how does the setting get dictated? Head admins, lore master, and head developers nominally decide this. This would not be a player vote so as to keep the mission and any overarching storylines stable and not suddenly cut off players from developing lore. Player votes for setting changes can be held when major lore arcs are finished. How/when does the setting change? Whenever developers feel like working on a new setting, they will. Lore outlines and agrees on where to go. In event of a disagreement, loremaster overrides. Head developers decide whether it’s possible, head admins advise the whole process. In general, “whenever the heck we feel like it.” It will obviously come with warning. Why should the NCV Aurora be so darn strong? We will need an excuse to explain why the ship is the focus of a story, and especially how it can survive so much stuff. The best conclusion is to make it be very fast, powerful, and stealthy if need be. This way, players always have a means to escape scary situations, and canonical choice resulting in the majority of the ship’s destruction can easily be solved with “The automated repair systems restored the ship’s integrity. It is limping but getting along just fine.” A big issue with our current setting is, “Why does this stuff happen to the NSS Aurora, and why does it happen so darn much?” This is a way around that in a sense, because things like infiltration and whatnot are no longer the failings of an entire megacorporation, but simply day-to-day life in regards to being a ship of importance. Constant events are simply unavoidable in the nature of the setting, which will pay off significantly in the long run. How it goes around that is simply factoring in exactly who does and does not want to fuck with the NCV Aurora. The question for the hyper powerful faction you end up in the space of becomes, “Do we want to risk chasing the Aurora and most likely fail, screwing with the megacorporations, potentially getting beaten in an engagement against them?” Instead of, “Do we really want to infiltrate the NSS Aurora with no strings attached?” Suddenly the stakes get higher and the purpose of messing with them becomes so much more clear. You’re after them because they’re important, and minor things like stowaways are entirely just as possible as an eldritch deity finding you, or pirates trying to fuck with you. Now, all that power just keeps galactic entities from saying “screw you” and deleting you when you go into their space. Is the ship alone? No. It will have an automated cargo shuttle in a hangar bay, and a docked, larger shuttle only accessible to new pilot roles and command staff. The ship itself will be accompanied by a hub vessel that will serve as an off-station escape point and transfer point to end rounds or serve as a getaway like the current shuttle does. It will have a cloaking field and be extremely fast, so it may escape in the possibility the NCV Aurora is just fucked lmao. It would be piloted solely by an AI, with little crew on board. Incoming transfers go through it first before boarding the NCV Aurora and processed accordingly with VIPs bypassing it entirely, meaning you get whatever docks and the safety checks are handled by crew, not some external force. Why isn’t there an NTCC Odin equivalent? Where will we get our ERT from? Simple reasoning is that the NTCC Odin’s presence removes a lot of player involvement from the equation. You are not calling upon a NanoTrasen fleet to do your bidding, nor instant-access bluespace artillery from a nearby fortress among the stars to decimate anybody you’d like. Unless you’re nearby one, of course. Players will be able to utilize the cargo automated shuttle to send off goods for trade. There is no magic deletion point where you send off dangerous assets, meaning you either jettison it, or keep it. That marauder in cargo is yours. That bulky equipment you found on the planet is yours. The alternative is wasting it entirely, which means things will hopefully be treated with more importance, and kept more often, rather than sent to the NTCC Odin for money. Furthermore, ERT will now be either slow, or a gamble. The ship itself is expected to be more than capable of defending itself, and in the event of emergency, is expected to run away first and ask questions later. With that said, distress beacons are the prime route to go down here, as calling for response would become a gamble of sending a myriad of faction-sent deathsquads or loosely affiliated pirates. What about money through cargo and ship funds? If the crew needs money, it will need just that - literal money, and it will need to conduct trade through cargo to accomplish this. The ship funds will be much more loosely used than current station funds and have no need to be persistent or have any fancy system or changes. Money will need to be a deciding factor in a lot more things than junk food and the merchant. What happens to CCIA? Nothing. CCIA will board the station by being a pursuing vessel that joins the fleet as long as it’s needed, and then departs again. That’s all, really. How does the current crew end up here, and what happens to the old Aurora? Players decide themselves. As for the Aurora II, it explodes, nobody knows why, as is our tradition. In all seriousness, I'm sure lore can come to a conclusion easily. Mechanics TL;DR on mechanics : The station is now mobile in every sense except code-wise, which explores different mechanics to mimic movement that don’t slaughter our poor server. On movement and z-levels Mechanically speaking, the setting would be set in a station-esque environment in the sense that there is no particular “movement,” outside of changing the bottom-most Z-level for atmospheric flight, landing planet-side, or simply being in space. To utilize as much map space as possible, this ship would need to be very vertical, and have a thin base to ensure as little stress as we can with the bottom of the ship being the only part that really moves. The properties of space itself could change between three states, where the ship is mobile, the ship is stationary, and the ship is in bluespace. The location at any given point of the vessel is determined by command. The ship itself could technically navigate through sectors of nearby space, sending all undocked nearby vessels to their standard Z-level, or just open space when it moves. The movement system can be an entire subsystem dedicated to tracking where the ship is at any given time, and have a large simulated grid separate from reality that determines where everything is. Command would now have the purpose to view this grid, and would be able to explore mechanics directly related to it. From scanning grid square by grid square searching for that pesky mercenary shuttle with varying power levels and scanning arrays, to literally shooting it out of the sky with the ship’s guns, anything is possible with this. The off-station Z-levels consists of two levels. The “Central Command,” or pseudo-OOC level is things like faction prep, antagonist prep, and ERT prep. The central command aspect of this, or where the majority of people go when the round ends, is the nearby cryogenics vessel. Minimalism and good map design is pivotal with off-station elements, as there will need to be a lot of condensed areas to make things work. The merc base would optimally be a single room connected to their shuttle on the pretense of being a larger mothership OOCly, for example. On current jobs, and new ones For purposes of retaining all roles possible, various things such as deployable bomb ranges, a reachable asteroid and so on will be accessible. In the case of shaft mining, we have the choice of expanding it to a blanket prospector role so that they can be seen in planetary landing helping around and doing their job there. The same extends to niche roles such as “phoron researcher,” or other things that can now be fleshed out. New jobs would be obvious ones, such as helmsmen, bridge staff, shuttle pilots, and more. An automated shuttle could lead to the asteroid z-level while a larger shuttle can travel freely between any. On cryogenics/arrivals and transfers The ship itself would be in a small fleet, with unconnected auto-shuttles replacing the CC Z-level and a “hub-ship” used for crew storage and providing an external spawn point like arrivals does. On-board cryo could exist too. In summary X (Edited out for clarity's sake.) As Skull put it, “Aurora itself is half a decade old, and has been running the same general flow for all of it. So one of the purposes of this project is to effectively step away from that formula and to try something new, while maintaining the general goals Aurora has: to provide an engaging roleplay experience within the framework of SS13.” Whether this suggestion actually covers that well enough to be considered is up to you to decide. I will work on this over time and try my best to fill in the gaps that appear as they come, as I’m certain I have not covered every base here. I am mostly posting this now to get across the general gist of what I mean.

What I've seen from you is good. Roleplay's great in-game, especially so for such a new player. Easy to follow and level-headed application makes this a no-brainer. Application accepted.

I will get to this later today.

Given I haven't warned them for their IPC play before, and also given it was a stressful round it seems, I decided to excuse the IPC behavior specifically of the round. What I told DasFox was,

I'll get this tonight. Sorry for the wait.

yes you goober

I'll adjust the presentable sprites to feedback tomorrow once I'm free (hopefully), namely what @Senpai Jackboot said.

Basically, a resprite of syndicate space gear (including softsuits, not shown here or complete yet) including one extra voidsuit variant and a spooky new crimson hardsuit. Aesthetically this is hopefully something more grounded than the cartoony, vibrant bright red depictions of the syndicate currently in the game. It also would help set us apart from other servers with a basic aesthetic change as far as something as iconic as nukeops goes. On top of this, the exact designs of the voidsuits and the literal doomsday device that is the crimson hardsuit are much different to set them apart from one another. Not done are species sprites, which aren't really important to the immediate design, but are also a shocking pain in the ass. Before subjecting myself to such a horrifying task, here's the progress so far to see what people think and if it's worth continuing. The first and second are voidsuits - either both can be ingame for variation, or only one can be put in. The third is the hardsuit. My gripe is the very chonky sidesprite of the hardsuit, seen on the right. Once you adjust to the perspective it's fine, but it may be jarring at times ingame.

The republic of biesel flag, maybe?

Hi. Sorry for letting this sit for a few days more than usual. In general, the application is written in good faith, but there's numerous issues generally coming from a writer's perspective that make it impossible for me to accept. I don't expect a novel, but the questions here are really lackluster. I don't expect every question to be great, either, but in this case, it's every category. If you intend to reapply, I would suggest giving it more time, as the - doesn't provide much faith here. I rarely accept very new players if at all for the IPC whitelist. Application denied.

are there sprites for departmental sec?

Byond Key: kyres1 Discord Key: noodle_buster#1934 Item Name: holo-symphette Item Description: A cheap, collapsible musical instrument which utilizes holographic projections to generate a rough noise. It's shaped like a small harp, and seems to be able to be tuned to mimic several old stringed Solarian instruments with some distorted audio. It's still got its price tag sticker on it. Item Appearance: The collapsed state is on the left, the expanded state on the right. In its collapsed state, it can be worn on the back slot as well. The sprite isn't seen here. Why is your character carrying this item to work?: Idowu is pretty much confined to the Aurora, and while a free shell, they have no place of residence and are essentially crawling along with the bare minimum. What little personal possessions they might have are stored on themselves, mostly being their two outfits and, of course, this little instrument. How did your character obtain this item (1 Paragraph or more please): I'll assume this is meant to cover exactly what led up to it being obtained, which is far more impactful than the act of getting it. In this case, the symphette was purchased from a gift shop on the Odin. Being an IPC they don't have much care for the intricate details of the instrument, merely what they can convey with it. It amplifies the performance - and a little plastic doesn't change how people view it in her arms as she's on stage. Regardless, the events leading up to the purchase were a simple recommendation to sing. It was brought up that Idowu had zero qualifications whatsoever to a head of personnel (Thea Mariett- i mean Reeves), and the two pondered for all of ten seconds before Thea just said "You could sing." So I took it upon myself to get a bunch of radios, spread them, have them tuned to the entertainment channel, and sing songs. Idowu exploits the strangely advanced voice synthesizer their frame is equipped with from that point on, basically gambling to become a star. It's that, or an inevitable death if they continue on their current path. Some stage time and a bunch of singing on the Aurora led her to put in more money in this dice roll of fate. With positive feedback from the crew, they spent the whole of fifty credits they had to spare after saving for months to purchase the cheap little symphette. How does this impact your character or tell a story about them or express who they are? (2 Paragraphs here please): From first glance it portrays what the Shell intends to be - an artist, something that must be separate from what it used to be. Some deduction recently had them thinking that they perhaps weren't the most friendly positronic before their memory wipe(s), and their "gamble" to excel artistically is seen as one of their only ways they can escape the past. More concerning, the cheap nature of the instrument is analogous to the utterly horrible situation they're in by simply being synthetic. As mentioned before, they are free, and without an owner to maintain them, their situation isn't exactly the best. Memory wipes mean removal of much-needed knowledge, now forever lost to Idowu. At the same time, they will essentially cling to it, as it portrays what little hope they may have left. How will you use this item to stimulate rp or improve interactions with crew?: It's a nonfunctional musical instrument. What I mean by this is that it doesn't play audio like space violins or pianos. To work around this I intend to generally do what I normally do, while utilizing the symphette to fill in the gaps that are there normally during performances Idowu does. For example, since it's a magic fake sci-fi instrument that just copies other instruments, Idowu would play it like a harp during certain songs, and a lute in other circumstances. If it's a stringed instrument, this thing can technically replicate it, though not in comparable quality to the real thing. It would greatly help as a supporting element. Additional Comments: Mechanically, it has no function. When used in-hand, it toggles between two states ; retracted and expanded. When retracted, it is a normal sized item. When expanded, it is bulky. It can be worn on the back when retracted. Also : the name is totally out of nowhere and was chosen by Jam. I love them. Also also : This application was re-written over quite a bit to clarify things and might seem like gibberish, let me know if there's trouble reading it and I'll happily clarify what I mean.

Application accepted, then.

Okay, time to reply. You're really enthusiastic about this so far. The backstory is fantastic. It's another new and fresh idea and, while I do intend to one day defeat them for their evil deeds against Humanity, I do trust Geeves' word on the matter. I love your idea of a clean-freak robot. It betrays the image of a big stronk G2 and gives it a vulnerable trait - a very blatant one, without stooping into gimmicky territory. I have one question and but one issue with the app. The question is pretty simple - are they free, or owned by now? My issue is just as simple. I'm really keen on accepting this app for the backstory alone but I do have to ask you to work on your reasoning for applying for IPCs. A rewrite isn't needed, just at the very least a short paragraph of something else. The reason I ask this is because it's very appearance and mechanically centralized, and one of the things I need to watch out for most is the folks who simply play the race for the mechanics and not the roleplay, perspective, or circumstantial differences. Some people have had really good responses to this and I'm looking forward to seeing what you can think of with just that little push.

needs to be reformatted with the new format, unfortunately. Already told the original poster, so just give it time I suppose

All the faith in the world here, and you answered @KingOfThePing 's questions pretty darned well. I'm glad you're thinking out of the box to give your IPC a trait beyond a given, named gimmick, and it's something you intend to build off of in the event you play them. Application accepted.

Regardless of the time it took, it's a definite improvement over the last. Glad you reapplied. Application accepted.

Hi. Let me get a few things straight. The IPC whitelist is not an application to see your understanding of how to play a robot. This sounds stupid, but I'm going to elaborate on this, though. You are applying to play an integrated positronic chassis, a very specific kind of robot which takes on the properties of an android, and in of itself, takes on its own unique properties. They are, in essence, something I explicitly have tried my best to turn into something that can be a character. Tools can be fun to play, but tools aren't characters. You aren't applying with a tool, as much as some previous applications might imply. You are applying with a character, and proving to me that you are capable of understanding the boundaries IPC lore has in place to outline this character in specific with no issues. With that in mind, I sometimes process based off of whether I think you understand the simple difference between a character and a tool. I say this a lot in replies, but do not get me wrong. I don't seek to blur the lines between an organic and an IPC by my excessive "characterization." What I intend to do is draw a clear line between them and just your average robot. Why? Because you can just as easily play the average robot. Go play a stationbound - it's that simple. What's blatantly obvious is that you are not applying to play a stationbound. You are applying to play the arguably sentient unbound positronics which are granted rights, and take on the freedom of making an even wider variety of characters, seeking a much wider variety of roles and having much more deeply intricate backgrounds. Not to mention, ironically, they almost have an organic means of character development - they're able to branch out as time goes on, but not immediately after creation. To move on though, your application is incredibly lackluster. Your backstory is all of five sentences long and, as DasFox echoes, is literally "bot go here bot go there bot end up here" or something. As for your replies to the reasoning behind this, I don't believe your reasoning here - outweighs the points I made above. This also echoes some issues I've seen in the past where people have noted that some extremely barebones characters get through the application process, only to leave the whitelist basically shat on with no effort required. I am not saying you intend to do this, but it's a big red flag to me when I see something, again, barebones. Application denied. You're free to reapply with a better application at any time.

A benevolent Zeng-Hu contractor IPC who honors the man who freed them through their work. This is fantastic, and I'm glad you redid it. It's a blurb of personality encapsulated in a way that actually complies with the rules presented on the IPC wiki page. Application accepted.

Sorry for letting this sit so long. The feedback is good and I have seen good things from your characters myself. My outstanding issues are with the application itself, which I'll cover now. Specifically, what I am strongly averse to is the interpretation of how Val, being a robot, would come to the conclusions you've provided here. Screeching, responding violently to stress, easily breaking under pressure and insulting with little reason is not something I seek from any IPC, especially one propped up as a character on an application. With that said, I do appreciate trying to shake up the formula as much as you did, and seeing something new is a breath of fresh air. What I don't want to see is Val doing any of the things it is said to do on the application, under any circumstance. I can't accept this immediately with all that in mind but I will allow you to rewrite the application itself to be more suitable to what's listed on the IPC page. This is a very, very big thing, and it's in bold characters for a reason. While it may be fun to play a malfunctioning bot, save it for antagonist rounds, and do it tastefully if you do, else it doesn't make sense that NT would continue employing or maintaining the bot in the first place. IPCs are expensive, and even though they can eventually maintain themselves through freedom albeit at a high risk to their own integrity, they still have to deal with the fact that failure to live up to expectations would mean unemployment, and unemployment means a fast death. The answers here are good save for the backstory and what's directly related to it. Just change that up, preferably with a rewrite, and I'll process this soon.

That's the idea! Or, better yet, we can add more things if we so please. Friendly vox, angry pirates, syndicate commandoes, the possibilities are endless.

To come to a conclusion on this app, I'll say I'm conflicted. On one end, you do show improvement as time has gone on and I'm willing to pin the lrp nature of MiniuOS in the past on something that can simply be worked out of over time. On the other end, there's majority negative feedback, plentiful evidence on my end and here of bad synth play, and a poor application which seems to skip story beats in favor of, as many applications do, going "Bot go here, bot do this, bot end up there." With all this said. I suggest skimming over the majority of the synthetic wiki pages. I'm willing to allow you to reapply at any time, so long as you don't use MiniuOS as the application subject. For now, though, this application is denied.

I'll look over this later today, hopefully.

This thread went inactive for a while but this is a good place to start in reviving it. Yes. This is a good compromise. Either this, or - this, would work best. The latter would work better in my opinion as antagonists would have an easy way to get to it and utilize it as an antagonist tool, but the former could add a layer of necessary difficulty to it.

I think IPCs speaking verbal languages with the exception of Nral'Malic or whatever it's called is fine. Body language, as Zundy said, doesn't make much sense, unless we go the route of uguu cat girl shells with tail attachments, which I'm not opposed to