MattAtlas

Looking at your logs, what was going to happen was clearly telegraphed. A few relevant lines: In our rules, killing someone without roleplay is not necessarily a rulebreak. There are situations where it's acceptable. A common example is a security officer happening upon an antagonist killing someone - in that case, the antagonist is well within their rights to "shut up" the security officer. Another example is a hostage escaping and trying to run - the antagonist can always mow them down without mercy at that point. In your case, the relevant rule is that the amount of roleplay needed depends on the escalation. By this point in the round, someone had already died (Clarity Beck) and it was said over Common many times. Their death was basically announced by the Unathi on the planet and, well, the Retinue clearly spoke about killing everyone when they landed. This was at almost (if not past) the 2 hour mark with plenty of prior roleplay beforehand. I don't see a gank here. I think your character took a risk in going to find Eris and it didn't play out to their advantage. That's totally fine, and these risks are what make events fun, in the end. Looking at the logs I don't really see any deadchecking, which would have been a real problem. The volunteer seems to have shot you quite a lot, but I think it's within the bounds of someone who is actively trying to kill you, pretty much - it looks like you were hit 7-8 times with what's essentially a .45 bullet, equating to about 210ish damage not counting damage that gets halved due to penetrating into your organs. For reference, 7 revolver bullets would be 315 damage, 7 7.62 bullets would be 245, and so on. I think the decision made by the loremasters is fine, in the end. What also factors into my decision is that there needs to be some sort of risk during events - risk that cannot be felt if event volunteers cannot feasibly shoot-to-kill like in this case.

Staff complaints are inherently for contesting a wrong decision. When you say that "Villa and Trio's decision is sound and they have a right to it", and following that, "the storytelling could benefit from Zofia's survival", this comes off as a matter of personal view rather than any procedural mistake by the loremasters. In that case there is little to contest, and I'm not sure if there is much we can investigate here. Just to be sure - is this what you meant with your complaint?

Head staff elections are not going to happen for a lot of reasons that were already stated. They're silly popularity contests that handicap the staff team's ability to take strong decisions more than anything. A lot of important decisions that changed the server for the better were unpopular at first and could only be taken because head staff didn't have to fear being voted out. Separate policy suggestions for more transparency in certain areas would be OK. Voting for dismissal.

On trial

I originally didn't want to reply to your complaint, but your bad faith against me has now become abundantly clear thanks to your latest thread, which is as direct and open of an attack against me as you could make. I'm not going to sit by and let you call me both incompetent and in need of replacement. You said you were "brooding" in that thread - I think you should apologize for the way you've gone about trying to get what is essentially nothing more than a personal vendetta. This is on you, and not on us. The entire application process and the expectations clearly outline that you need to know the lore, and what an acceptable character is. It's up to you to make a reasonable character. We give you a ton of freedom to do so, we don't even double-check people's characters most of the time and we let them make whatever they want within the confines of the rules. You say here that "the SCC knowingly and charitably promoted an SSMD affiliate and Sol patriot into a command position". No, you made a character that is against the rules, and you are going to have to remove (read: retcon) the parts that break the rules. Your SSMD flag was denied. You were told very clearly at that time: "It's hard to believe that the SCC, already having a rocky relationship with the Sol alliance, is going to allow a looted flag branded with Szlazi's fleet. The Southern Military District was actively hostile to Biesel and engaged their ships and raided their territory for most of its existence. Near the end they did have a ceasefire, though that doesn't quite make up for it. That makes it harder to justify versus one of the wildland states that wasn't so belligerent." You were already given the exact same reasoning I gave you for your flagpatch being unacceptable. If a flag isn't, then a flagpatch that's constantly displayed on your person also logically isn't. I would like you to tell me how the SCC is politically neutral when Solarian consulars aren't allowed on the ship, something done as a direct political response to the invasion of Biesel. I'll look into this and if it breaches the regulation I've made clear time and time again then it will be removed. That said, you made your flagpatch (and had your flag denied) well before this item was allowed, so if anything you should have told us that it broke the rules, not used it as a bat in your own complaint. You're making a lot of ifs that assume that you made your character to be totally compliant with the lore. If bwoink you to not wear the flagpatch because it breaks the rules then necessarily you have to change your character to not do that. It doesn't matter what she did - if you display an anti-corporate symbol, the SCC is going to look down upon you, and that's too much for heads of staff. Those characters can exist, just like Kira being an SSMD sympathizer is fine, the key point is that they can't OPENLY and INDISCRIMINATELY display their anti-corporate leanings. These characters have to be made with care. You can even make a Captain that dislikes the SCC, maybe they just took the job because it pays well and they're a hypocrite. The reality of climbing the corporate ladder is that you have to make moral sacrifices and your character will likely be a hypocrite. That's good - it makes your character conflictual, having to break your morals to climb the ladder is something that you can easily transform into character fuel. The important thing is that you can't make a head of staff character that behaves the exact same as a normal character. You have more limitations and that's part of the game. It's up to you to make them into interesting limitations, because you definitely can. As for the rest of what you've written; DPRA individuals can be be heads of staff... if you omit the rest of the rule. This essentially means that you cannot be ALA-affiliated as a head of staff. As for Himeans, I already corrected you in your ticket, you are way off. A Himean needs to renounce everything they are to be a head of staff - their citizenship, their family, their friends, and they are permanently exiled from Himeo. No Himean that loves their country is doing that. Similarly, no Himean head of staff is going to be allowed to wear Himean paraphernalia. You call this inconsistent, but you are the one creating these inconsistencies by making wrong claims about the lore.

Try again?

Hi, apologies for the extreme delay - I've had a long break. You've been unbanned from security.

Hi, apologies for the extreme delay - I've had a long break. Check if you can join now, you should be unbanned.

Hi, apologies for the extreme delay - I've had a long break. Check if you can join now, you should be unbanned.

As the person that ultimately decided that your whitelist should be stripped, the key thing to understand is that you did not do your due diligence on extremely important matters that involve another player's character. You deciding to lie about Erwin being in a relationship with a Shell to your home nation and also neglecting to tell staff that you were going to lie, are pretty big things to mess up. This goes doubly so when you later change your mind on a dime. These things can have severe effects on a character or even on the player's will to play the character - what you did is going far beyond the rules. To add to this, not telling the Human loredev about something as important as your character lying to their home nation cannot be attributed to a simple misunderstanding or being forgetful. If this weren't your first offense, sure - but this is not your first offense with a command whitelist. Ultimately, your whitelist was stripped because this isn't the first time you've been talked to about command play by us, and also because this is more severe than a simple in-game rules violation.

I think this wholly depends on how players will play during the gamemode, not something I would consider without seeing Odyssey work in practice.

Is this something you are 100% sure of?

accepted

This isn't really a duffel specific thing, anything with a slowdown value applies the slowdown if it's in your hands. Duffels do it the same way a hardsuit control module or a longbow shell does.

Your CID is the same as this guy's so it just gets caught in the same ban net. I'm not sure there's anything I can do short of lifting the original ban lol. What you can do is use a different VM or machine pretty much.

I've removed the sticky ban now. Should work once and for all hopefully.

Submit your mission ideas here for a chance to see them implemented for release: https://forms.gle/uEXE3WataiZZ52i56

Okay, you keep getting caught by random griefer bans. Try now.

Not planned right now

It isn't possible to always involve everyone, nor do I expect the first missions to. The point is never to have a fully functioning perfect utopic system right out of the gate, because that's unreasonable and impossible. The idea is always to get something that works out, and then let people iterate over it. Don't expect things to be fully calibrated on the first round. No. I want as many people to play Storyteller as possible. That doesn't mean it'll be handed out to everyone, but I don't see it as being much harder than a command whitelist. Not sure. The only way we'll know if it's a problem or not is to try it out and see what happens. Generally when things become abandoned they won't be maintained. Current gamemodes aren't maintained either, since nobody is really interested in the massive amount of work needed to make a gamemode or even to maintain it. I don't see it as a bad thing, personally - we need a new gamemode loop, not a parallel thing. Antags will stay but like I said before, they won't be the main focus of the server after a while. The examples are just examples to make people understand the scale of what can be done, I'm not going to put much effort into them obviously. I need to come up with a concept first and the implementation comes second. The doc also says that canon missions will be restricted in nature and they won't be shooty typically. I can't give an exact idea of what they'll be until I code them, though. I think it's possible, but I won't say yes/no yet. Can't really give a real response to this hypothetical right now, it's a "wait and find out" thing here. No idea. It's a valid concern (and a helpful one to bring up) but I have no ideas on it off the top of my head.

Try now.

Repeating content is a concern with anything. No matter what kind of new gamemode or new away site or new anything I would make, there's always going to be repetition. It's up to characters, the storytellers, the missions and the actors to keep it fresh - there's now four layers (five if you count admins) to keep things new instead of just two (antags and characters), which is about the best we can do. If the community gets involved enough, they can make new missions, and keep things fresh for everyone. The gamemode will just be dropped with a few missions and people will be told to vote it. When I say it needs to become the default I mean that eventually we'll have to start thinking about a "Mission Briefing" optic when adding things rather than a "Secret" thing. If you're adding a gun to sec, at some point we have to start thinking about how if it fits with the new gamemode, rather than if it's too OP for lings. From me personally, no. Don't really have the time to do two things at once. I thought about it and I realised that adding Missions that take place exclusively on the Horizon would be pretty easy, so yeah it's possible, they'd just be different kinds of Missions. I do want to make landing parties and expedition prep way faster at the same time. The PR will be merged and people will be told to play the gamemode. No real way to test a gamemode other than dropping people in the frying pan. End of July at the latest, probably. It is the plan for this to be a gamemode alongside the others, people would still be able to vote Secret or whatever. Read above on what "the default" means here. Would be up to the storyteller. This is mostly addressed in the doc already (it says that Canon Missions should only be minor stuff most of the time), but yeah, things won't be autocanon. It's like if your character died to carps on an extended round. You'd just get to retcon it if you wanted. If there's an IR it would follow normal canonicity rules, aka you can retcon it if all involved agree. I agree generally. I'll keep this in mind, might be a good idea. I share these concerns but I'm not really 100% sure at the moment how to involve every single department, it's a good thing to keep in mind. The service FOB idea is about the only one I have other than Service making MREs and shit to send groundside or serving off-duties/anyone who stayed on the Horizon. Agreed with everything here.

That's why the Missions themselves don't need a GM to run - they're made to work as is, then someone can roll a GM and run their own thing if they want to. I'd also like to police expectation in a sense - this is a good excuse to cut down on the antag toxicity we have and to go towards a more sane "roll with the punches" culture. At the same time, I don't think Storytellers need to do anything too out there if they don't want to... they can do something fairly simple if they'd like to as well, like just adding some extra roles to a Mission. But that's all up in the air as "ifs". I think whether or not two hour rounds are long enough is something that'll only crop up once we start playtesting, so I have no definite answer. The volunteer stuff is soft-handled by there being a delay in the Horizon getting to the Mission (it'll probably take 15 mins to get to the planet). Storyteller isn't a staff role. My idea is to implement it as a "player state" where you have the verbs to do things that staff do, but no actual normal perms. Build mode is being updated right now actually, there's a PR up that ports a much better version of it. This is a valid concern, though I think a Non-Canon Mission should be no different from a normal antag round, and Canon Missions really shouldn't be anything LARP-y unless required by the current arc/sector.

Today I announce to you the fruit of half a year of constant thinking, scheming, going back to the drawing board, questioning, and whatever else. Our gameplay loop is not sustainable and not fixable. Aurora as it is right now cannot continue existing. We need a revolution. I present to you Odyssey - there won't be any TL;DRs as reading the entire document is expressly required to understand the implementation, its goals, what it entails and its effects on the server. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CU2KY5Pwzu5izL5eu9l6k5cH1Rit7t_8RalDpgDnJG8/edit?usp=sharing Please leave your feedback here ONLY AFTER YOU READ THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT.

Here is a question - if you know you affected something as part of a group, and an article acknowledges it (thus it's in the lore and you can bring it up with a reference) without naming a specific name, why does that to you count as being "watered down" and "shit on"? You did affect the lore, you did affect the outcome of the event, why is not being specifically named and elevated over others the problem? Again you're equating not being named in a group effort to being "swept under the rug". This is only true if you think you only had an impact on the event if you were directly and explicitly named in an article or on the wiki. Which is not true - your contributions remain, you can still talk about them (as you often do on the Discord...), how exactly is your involvement being swept under the rug? Lastly, I hope you never come to me telling me that I can't canon kill your character if you do something stupid. This is weird grandstanding that you can't possibly think would work or do anything constructive. It just poisons the discourse by targeting us as your enemies - and I have enough self respect to stand up for myself. You do not want to poison this well more than you already have by opening up the post with "Aurora doesn't value my time". This equation is what lies at the heart of this problem because it is wrong. Aurora is not a tabletop game. Your characters are not tabletop characters and this is written very explicitly (the rules don't allow you to be a protagonist, neither do the events, neither does any existing mechanism in lore - just look at how Eternia or Verdict handle canon arcs). This kind of analogy creates unreasonable expectations that should be quashed, because group efforts are at the base of normal people succeeding in things. Your characters are normal people at the end of the day - slightly better than normal because they landed a really good job, but not protagonist-like. Before anyone says "this is actually inconsistent with the big shootout events", I have a big issue with them (I intentionally never participated in any, other than the warehouse assault where I spent most of my time fixing people's problems!) and I directly proposed heavily, heavily cutting down the scale and their presence in lore arcs.