MattAtlas

I have some questions to ask you, but please answer Shimmer's first, @Borya.

What do you mean exactly when you say this? It's true that in the NBT2 plans I've mentioned that Earth and Biesel need to be devastated for the setting to really have a reboot, though I've mentioned in lore channels that I've become more partial towards not straight-up blowing up the planets. Earth was originally going to be phoron-bombed and entirely evacuated/dead barring a few scavengers, Biesel was going to be orbitally bombarded into nothingness, but I'm willing to change this slightly if I hear a compelling idea. I want to know what this looks like in your mind, basically. I disagree with your subsequent position that these events must be written as visceral, long-term, slow-burn and so on, but I need to hear what exactly you think to be able to form up a reply. Good answer, this is basically the idea behind the IW2 and the SCC falling, it's to leave a power vacuum/remove the current Spur hegemonies and allow the alien nations to grow in their place. Good answer here as well, I think I agree with all of this. I think this is where we disagree the most, so I want to be exactly sure of what you mean. Why do you think it is imperative that a setting must follow "established rules and norms of in-universe science"? To what degree do you think this extends? If we want to take what you mean to the extreme, FTL travel isn't possible in the first place, neither is phoron, really. These are two foundational elements that allow our setting to work. In another application, I mentioned the discussion we had about fantasy-style metals/new alloys. I remember you disagreeing vemently on this point. What's your thought process behind this? Do you think the lore believability concession outweighs the gameplay improvements? Why does a space opera-leaning setting require characters to be Luke Skywalker? The current arc, I would argue, is space opera-ish; look at the overarching plotline, psirens, the Lemurian Sea, and even how the events are structured. You say that psychological detachment is a consequence of things being theatrical. Why do you think this happens and can you provide a precise example?

Welcome to the team, you're starting tomorrow

Let me begin by saying that your work on the current arc is one of the main reasons why the server still holds pop today. So for that, you only have my compliments and nothing else. It takes a lot to create something from nothing in this case, and I think you overall did good work on the arc, even if I could criticise parts of it; it ended up working out. On this side, no complaints. However, I think your application is weakest exactly here. Do you not think that the lack of any actual long-form writing on Aurora is a problem for your application? I understand that you've written part of the Lemurian Sea page, but I'm mostly looking for things like writing planets, origins, because this is what gives you experience on understanding what people like to play. Lore Masters are expected to review pages upon pages of documents of lore, but to do this effectively you need to have written for Aurora before, is my initial position. This is because you need to understand what should be written and what should not be written. Too much fluff and too little fluff, for example, are both big problems. You need to strike the goldilocks zone, or you end up with situations like Xanu's wiki page (too much fluff), or something like Port Antilla (none and uninteresting). What should Anabasis' freelance companies look like, in your opinion? This is a free question, no holds barred, answer as if you had complete creative direction. Keep in mind that we are talking about companies that we would meet as enemies, the company we could work for, and other freelancer companies that could reasonably pop up on the ship as playable characters. You say this, but you don't elaborate on why. Why is this important? Why is the current state of this bad? What does it bring to the game? Are we talking about mostly off-server work (wiki, lore, articles) or in-game work? Good answer. What do envision when you say a harder sci-fi background? I will use an example of a recent talk we've had in lore channels. I brought up the fact that I would like to add fantasy-like minerals to Aurora, also some unique to species, to add gameplay diversity/more depth to certain gameplay loops such as miners and in preparation for Fabrication. The gameplay reasoning is simple; it's boring to always mine the same stuff as a miner, and having more minerals leads to us being able to have different alloys easier which leads to more ideas for gameplay and so on and so forth. This is something we all ended up disagreeing on somewhat also because of reasons related to hard-scifi (mainly, requirements for realistic metals, alloys, etc... that expanding the periodic table isn't really possible, so on and so forth) which I tend to personally disagree with. What is your opinion on this?

Hello, everyone. With our lore master retired, I have chosen to open up the position of Lore Master for applications. Due to how important the current crossroads we are at is, I have decided that I want every applicant to answer a set of questions, and I want the community to be able to question them on what they believe in. Application Format Ckey / Discord Username: Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page? Past Experiences and Knowledge: Examples of Past Work, if any: --- 1) Describe your thoughts about the Anabasis project as a whole, whether they be negative or positive. 2) What is your plan regarding Anabasis as a Lore Master? What sort of focus would you bring to the table? 3) What do you think the current setting lacks? What are its biggest flaws? 4) Do you lean towards a space opera writing style regarding the events and the setting, or towards a hard-scifi style? Why? 5) What are your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to being in a management position?

Unbanned.

We're definitely keeping the role because it's needed, what we're unsure about is the name of the job and its specific duties. There definitely needs to be a dedicated piloting role, which BO will definitely be, the problems are more related to their duties on the Bridge and the extent of their authority. Bluespace travel is mostly gone, since it relies on phoron. Warp will still exist, but it's a lot slower. I don't think this is dissonant, if anything it's a moral problem for the character. The whole setting is shaped up to give characters more internal conflicts to think about, naturally people will have to make characters that fit. Besides, it's not like you get a choice since you're stuck there. You can't really just leave a ship that's in the middle of nowhere. I disagree but I don't think I'm convincing you further until the development diary on the corporations and the freelancer groups comes out to be honest.

Because I believe it'll allow for far better roleplay depth and interactions as opposed to everyone being just a freelancer. I wanted to add some proper inter-branch conflict to the Blood Diamond because it'd be sad to skip on what I think is one of the best ways to create some real tension on the ship. Specialist knowledge (technology researchers, investigators, salvage techs) and jobs that the freelancer companies wouldn't have many people doing in the first place (most of the hospitality wing). This will still be possible. In fact, I'd argue that the presence of corporates on the ship makes the choice have a lot more gravitas than if it were a foregone conclusion because everyone's a freelancer, since you have to actually consider who's on your crew, their reaction, convincing them, etc. There will be more on this in a future development diary, but corporations don't really have the means to instantly react to things anymore. Bluespace gates and travel are mostly gone, and corporations can't really muster the private forces to respond to intergalactic events anymore. In NBT2 it's the freelancer groups that hold all the cards, because they are now the ones with an actual fleet that can target corporate assets. Think about it this way: for the corporations, it's more profitable and safer to just accept the contract and give the freelancer groups the people they want, because then they have better relations with them in the future to negotiate with, and potentially pay them to do their dirty work. They're not the ones ever holding the knife by the handle.

I agree with all of these things, but these are things that happened in the past some 7-8 years ago, they did not happen as a consequence of NBT2 planning. Science has been in this state for a long time and I bring these points up to let people know why that department needs to be remade from the ground up. We know what happened was wrong and effectively killed Science, the point of us saying is so that people know we're on the right path when we rework it. As for it never being updated, the truth of the matter is that a department gets as many updates as there are developers that play it. Developers have limited time on their hands and can only code so many things, so they'll mostly always pick something that they can interact or play with rather than a huge game-spanning rework for a department that they do not play. Science never had any players in it that were inclined towards development after 2018, so that's a big reason why it's in this state. Science does not work because the act of researching new things does not make sense in a canon setting. Research can't be canon because we can't constantly keep making new research items, and having to research the same things over and over again is a gigantic plot hole. We'll consider it, like I said, slot numbers are not final at all.

I don't agree with the mantra of "don't worry about things until they become problems" generally speaking but it's a good point that if every available contractor job is filled with corporates, then there probably wouldn't be enough to become a majority anyway. I'll keep it in mind and see if we can do away with the percentage divide between freelancers and corpos since reception on that hasn't been too good anyway. I don't understand from what perspective you could say "gutted" when the entire department is being remade ground-up. What's on this development diary is just the basic skeleton of what we want to do with R&D, which we haven't even expanded upon because we haven't gotten to actually implementing said rework. If you're talking about removing jobs like xenobiology, we intend to make it up for it by adding content in actually relevant/lore-compliant parts of Fabrication, such as DRM cracking, making prototypes and etc. Yes, sadly jobs like xenobiology will have to go, but that's because they're essentially barely lore-compliant, unmaintained deadweight. As for telescience, that's one thing we might keep, but it needs further discussion. We're still a good 3 years away from NBT2 or so, so I don't think you should feel discouraged from doing stuff right now. Just because your old position isn't present in a new hierarchy doesn't mean it invalidates your curriculum.

This makes sense in theory, the problem is that I don't want the ship to ever be in a situation where corporates aren't the minority (<40%).

Accepted!

Accepted!

Won't be forced corporate, the current thinking is that each (C) job will have a percentage split between corporate and freelancers. We'll think about it, the main issue is that I believe most people tie the word Corpsman to paramedics.

The license we use is CC BY-SA 4.0. The key part is that you cannot retroactively revoke your work from the wiki; otherwise, you can do with your art as you wish.

When you say you would like to discuss your side of copyright, what do you mean? Our license is publicly available on the wiki if you'd like to see it.

Antagonists will be present in Contracts but in a canon fashion. Although most of Contracts is PvE based I do want to implement things like mercenary or raiders back as high-intensity contracts if there are enough people readied up with a certain pref. The traitor uplink will probably be grandfathered in as what Contracts antagonists use to gear up. Things like ling, vampire, and cult are probably going to be sunsetted as... well, nobody maintains them in the first plac,e and second of all they're not canon so unusable in the new gamemode. As for Secret itself, it will be eventually sunsetted as a gamemode yes, since the entirety of NBT2 relies on people playing the gamemode where they can get money. Regarding Storytellers, the short answer is yes, the long answer about that is: find out in another dev diary! No plans for either of these things at the moment, I think the status quo here is fine. It is not physically possible to put everyone under the spotlight in every round and neither should we do that. The Freelancers themselves are all going to work for the group that the Blood Diamond is under, so Avarizia, but overall we are going to try and make it as interesting of a group as possible. I don't really know if we'll have other merc groups on the ship yet; current plan is no, but it's one of those things that I'm still mulling over. Neither of these things are going to be limited I don't think. Just know that corps in 24XX are not seen very well. Either way, your allegiance is going to be to Avarizia no matter what. You might have a bit more freedom in what you can wear but you still have to bring the money home for your employers. Yeah, absolutely. Part of the new ship combat rework that will happen this year or the next is to allow AI-controlled ships on the overmap for this reason.

Here it depends on what people's definition of "grimdark" is. In my opinion, it's a label that gets thrown around too much without the actual definition ever being clear. The way I consider grimdark personally is a world where nothing you do can really ever matter and it's just a constant fight for survival, nothing more. This is absolutely not the case in NBT2. The galaxy is worse as a whole, sure, but things don't suck everywhere. There are areas where life goes on as normal, such as in inner Sol, and there are areas where life is a lot worse than before as well. The sense of scale isn't grimdark, either; the ship can definitely affect a region for good or worse. When I say the setting is more morally grey, I mean that you are not by default going to be the good guys. Sometimes you will have to do some bad things to get money because you're freelancers. And that's part of the conflict - it does not mean that what you do doesn't matter or that things always suck, or that there will never be a chance to do some good in the galaxy. As for the names, like I said, don't focus on them too much. Blood Diamond is just a development name. It's the first one that I came up with because I needed one to use in the first development diary and it is liable to change, same with evilness, it's just a variable to track infamy. Those names aren't really meant to reflect much. If you go back to the first dev diary, it says that none of the names are set in stone and they're just names we use to refer to things without saying "the new ship". Yes, service is planned to be involved in supplying the expedition with stuff like food, drinks, and so on, which like I said will become more relevant. As for involving them elsewhere, people have to realise that there's a logical limit to how much we can involve the department that is, in concept, a department fundamentally about not being involved. We will try our best, sure, but there is no world in any SS13 server where SS13 is going to be involved in the main gameplay loop to the same degree and as much as, say, Security or Engineering. It is just not feasible because the concept of the department isn't that. The bartender is never going to have the same involvement as a security officer because they're a bartender, it's a low stakes role that is meant to be low stakes. Low intensity contracts will take the place of the current extended/traitor/ling/whatever rounds. Whether they'll be boring or not I'm not really sure at the moment. We'll see. Another planned piece of gameplay is forward operating bases and Service setting up there to help out Engineering and whoever else comes back or is working at the FOB with food, drinks, and so on. This is because Bridge Officer is one of those roles that are still up in the air in terms of exact duties (and the name as well). At the moment I want to keep them similar to what they are now, but with more freedom to run around and snoop in other departments as the XO's dutiful assistants. Ship money is not randomized, it's persistent. The only times it gets reset are with the Tithe, and if it reaches maximum infamy and is cut down to size by other off-ships. However, you do use ship money to requisition gear and other equipment, or to pay off pirates or other people, so it's liable to go up or down depending on what people do. Notoriety or infamy are pretty good.

See https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/22307 and contact me on the Discord if you want further details.

We haven't really gotten to the point of drafting the new regulations and SOP so this isn't something I can answer with certainty at the moment, but in all likelihood yes, there will be some sort of mechanism to replace the CO. There kind of has to be one anyway in case they are somehow subverted or incapacitated and etc. As for being forced to do things, it's just a matter of fact that giving the Captain role more power means that they can make people do different things. Like I said in the other thread, the setting is more morally grey, so if you play an unequivocally good character then you'll be immersing them in dilemmas more often. But I think that makes playing them more fun, not the opposite; you have to work from within the system and be a good person regardless to change what you can, which is a more interesting angle IMO. There are going to be discussions about the future of CCIA in the near future, so I'll hold off on commenting on that. As for regulations, yeah, those will exist of course. We don't want every round devolving into massive brawls or mutinies or whatever. I did say several times that things would be more lax when it comes to character conflict, but we're not looking for constant shitfests either, that would be a pain in the ass to moderate and it would ruin the atmosphere. Fully aware we need to strike a careful balance here, so we'll try our best. The problem is I can't feasibly limit the corporate jobs more than I already have, this is pretty much already the least amount of jobs that can be corporate and it's still quite a lot of them. The original version of the department chart had even less, and the feedback I got is that for proper representation we would need more roles to be corporate, also given the corporations we'll probably have. I think it'll just be a fact of the matter that you'll have to play a certain character less if they're a corporate unfortunately, it's the only way to properly represent the freelancer/corporate split in certain roles. Some roles will likely have more of a split than others, in the sense that they'll have more %-corporate than %-freelancer, but more on that in a future development diary.

Has been on my to-do list for a long time. It'll come soon-ish.

Yeah, mainly they'll be effects to force people to not go into expeditions without the appropriate supplies. For the effects of those you'll have to wait a future development diary as we're getting into elements that are still being discussed/theorized at the moment, and that need other systems to be in place first before they can really make sense. It's rest intended as just taking a breather, so sitting down or lying down without combat for a while, eating and drinking, etc. Basically the kind of rest you would have after a lot of physical exertion.

No because that's just too much trouble for no real gain and I don't want that sort of risk. Nothing like that is set in stone, no, what's important is the general idea at this stage of development really. Most definitely yes as the aim is to make every gameplay element canon basically. Most probably, yes. Depends on the time we have. Half of this is is already in game so it'd be pretty easy to make this work, and that's mostly the current idea, yeah.

At the moment the contracts subsystem isn't made for contracts to be given to off-ship spawns, but it's something I thought of too while writing the development diary and might implement it. If I don't, they'll get a flavour message or something saying that they have to go after the Blood Diamond. This would only happen if the ship has reached maximum threat level, which would be really fucking hard. A lot of money will be gone and a lot of persistent stuff will disappear, which will be a Pretty Bad consequence. It'll be canon of course. The crew and so on will survive, but they'll lose most of their resources to pay off the bounty. As for the hostile ships being AI, there will be player spawns for them, but the new ship combat system (more about that in a future dev diary) will support AI ships. The limit is per job. There would be a limit, no more than half of a given role at most, though there can be some exceptions in some roles (most of service could feasibly be mostly if not all corporate, Fabrication would be half corporate half freelancer at most), etc. Unmarked roles are freelancer only, yes.

Updated the department graphic with the new contractors, somehow the new version hadn't saved.