Skull132

Good post. Further points for consideration. From an antagonist perspective, killing someone is often the only way to actually remain "safe". Or "Safest" out of all of the possible alternatives. A majority of characters tend to taddle the moment they're released, even if under some form of threat. Keeping hostages is incredibly costly and basically removes your freedom as an antag, because you have to monitor the hostage, and hostages aren't mobile. Etc. So really, if you get caught doing something naughty, very quickly, aggressively, and violently nuking whoever saw you is the best way to remain safe. Sure, someone's gonna see a murder, but they won't have a clue as to who did it. At least, not initially. "Violence of action" is a very useful principle to adhere to while playing antagonist in SS13, including on Aurora. Killing someone in such scenarios obviously will not really "offer" any RP to the unfortunate victim. But the idea is that keeping the antagonist alive and safe will allow them to continue affecting the round. And the more an antagonist can affect the round, the more eventful the round is. Ideally, anyways. Obviously many things can happen. Security can shut them down later, they might fuck up, their plan might end up failing, whatever. But such is life. With regards to what could be done to amend the situation. Here's a thought. Even if the staff end up ruling in favor of an antag from the player complaints, ahelps, etc. that get generated from legitimate killing of characters, there's a considerable amount of mental stress from simply being involved in such activities, moreso as the "target". So perhaps more decisive dismissal, without even touching the implicated player, would benefit the general situation? It would make the antagonist players feel safer, since they no longer get pinged about everything. Also, anonymizing antagonists further would possibly help. 🤔

While the initial point you make is valid, the proposed solution would lead to gutting one department even further and adding even more responsibilities to another. Which isn't necessarily a great play. "Science" doesn't necessarily have to be "Science" in terms of conducting novel research. Having a micro-electronics role or such responsible for small scale prototype and device manufacture could easily be feasible, which is what the protolathe and circuit board stuff does.

No change in SS13 is permanent. Just a matter of what time frame is allocated to changing it again

idk i actually quite enjoy the aesthetic that's on display. 🤔 Those lighter coloured walls look sweet as well.

Title cards look tight.

One further consideration. There's nowhere to really run for the antag. The entire station is controlled and inhabited by forces hostile to them. Not many people are willing to help take in an antag, for example. So a yet unanswered question is, where does an antag go after committing bloody murder?

Holy shit. I actually burst out laughing at whoever posted that Discord post. Jfc get a clue, folks.

Okay but, why tho? It's pretty easy for new players to grasp that the server name is Aurora, and thus the ship's/station's name is also Aurora. Makes sense, simple, etc. etc.

no.

There's a selection of people from whom I will still happily take code related pings from at 2 AM 😉

I'm not even sure how I'd feel about that 🤔

Do not make the mistake of painting me out as something I am not. While I have been a constant element in leadership for a long time, my colleagues have greatly shaped Aurora's direction as they've come and gone. FFrances' era as Head Admin & with her team cardinally changed the roleplay directions of the community; the work of GarnItzal as the first shared Head Admins ushered in a new golden age as far as staff structure and cohesion went. Arrow has done a marvelous job introducing new systems & procedures for both staff and players. My departure is no more significant than the departure of one of the other Head Admins, that is how the modern management system works.

Alright, so. Let's get the main thing out of the way: Effective this Sunday, I will be retiring from my position at Aurora. What's mildly funny is that this September is the 8th birthday of this community, so perhaps think of it like a small gift 😉 And now, before anyone goes out of their way to say something, please read and consider the following. Quick Q&A first, followed by a longer tangent. Why are you doing this? Simple: time has moved on, my priorities have changed, and it's time to vacate the position so that someone else can use the role to further the community. My activity in general has been dropping over the last 3 years, and while before I could still review PRs on the weekend, I am just not feeling any of it anymore. Which is fine. What's gonna change with Aurora?! Absolutely nothing (much). As I said above, I've basically been distancing myself from this community for well over 2 years now. And eversince this year, my activity just completely fucking ceased (due to school and my degree). The current leadership structure and staff team have well proven themselves capable of handling both the day-to-date activities on Aurora and the long term planning of the community without my presence. My absence will not change much in that regard. What's gonna happen to NBT?! It'll continue being worked on exactly as it has been for the past 3 - 4 months. My contribution to NBT over the last year has been the organization of a single meeting which sorta re-kickstarted the project over the summer. Everything else has been organized by Alberyk and Kyres at the helm, and supported by the other developers and spriters. My contributions after that have been non-existent. What's gonna happen to the server hardware? The hardware will be transferred over to Arrow at the end of the week. Webservers have been paid for over the year and we've got extra time to figure that out. Someone else will be trained up on how to perform server critical tasks as well, to cover for the hole I'll leave. Plus, all of the present infrastructure has been built by Arrow, I've simply footed the bill. So we're good on that count. Will there be a new Head Developer appointed? Almost certainly, yes. But a concrete decision will be made in the near future, separate from this post, so stay tuned for that. I hope this Q&A covers all of the immediate concerns. I'll now lead into a bit of a longer diatribe about worthless things like feelings and saying goodbye It's been a blast. The 7 years that I've contributed to this community have helped me immensely. Aurora is where I learned and started developing both leadership skills and programming skills. Both of which I've been able to very successfully apply in my life. And it is my hope that over those 7 years, I've been able to help foster an environment where everyone is able to get some benefit as well. Whether it be new devs learning how to dev, people trying out managerial and creative stuff, or just players having fun and having a good place to unwind. I've also met and worked with some stellar folks over this time. I'd like to thank every past-present-and future staff member (and the players) who've contributed to the community alongside me. I know that most of you did this out of the goodness of your heart, and I thank you all for this effort. The fact that we have such a strong staff team, and community in general, is also a reason why I'm confident that this community will last a good few years going forward, at least. And I am confident that the staff will continue to foster a positive and cooperative environment. I'll still be around on the general discord after this, so if anyone wants to chat with me about stuff, feel free to ping or write a DM. But, it's been fun, and thank you for the amazing and formative 7 years! I truly-truly hope that it's been positive for most everyone else as well that has been involved with the community! Questions and stuff are also welcome here.

These changes aren't just lore driven, FYI. Gameplay and ingame atmosphere in general will also benefit from a potentially more colourful and perhaps a more fractured ecosystem. More dynamics to the social systems for players to use when roleplaying, more points of conflict to exploit, etc. Really, the hope is that this will lead to a more interesting setting roleplay wise, and provide just more for the players to do.

Some thoughts. I noted someone saying that we're adding a barrier to entry wrt. to the lore you need to understand. This is sort of true but it's also a positive. If NT exists as a generic default, then there isn't much incentive for people to look up new factions. This change makes them more prominent, ergo, hopefully, more useful. In general, ingame lore presentation is something that needs to be worked on anyways. (And has been worked on, with the various info presentation screens!) I don't think the concept is that insurmountable, considering that every MMO and RPG basically does something similar to this during character creation. I'd also like to emphasize something, specifically around moving your characters from NT to another corp. I hope everyone understands that the effort of lore and how it affects characters is cooperative in nature on this server. The lore team can offer up potential reasons for your character to move ranks, but in the end, you also have to be flexible enough to accept those changes. (If you want to, anyways. It's totally fine to also just make new chars.) Hopping from one company to another might be justifiable with something as simple as, "They offered me better opportunities". So I truly hope that everyone who's concerned about the transition is also aware that they have to put in effort themselves as well, the lore team cannot deliver these things on a silver platter.

Get what I say checked out by a lore person but the SCC is a massive conglomerate of corporations. They probably don't have a unified view on things like IPC treatment or whatever. Individual corporate culture should still shine through in their respective contractor roles.

Any arguments towards "Over powered" are kinda pointless. Once a scientist knows what they're doing, they can get access to whatever the materials available to them already allow them. So why not just. Remove the minigame, since the kewl stuff is hidden behind materials anyways? And if anything is out of whack, just balance it with the item cost itself. Like, as far as gateways go, RnD is a very shitty one. So to be clear. This wouldn't remove mechanical balance. We can still do that by adjusting mining yields and item material costs.

Right. I did a more thorough cleansing. Hopefully that will put a stop to this repeating. Should be lifted now.

In one form or another, this is definitely something we'll be discussing in the meeting in 2 week's time.

Eh. Main reasons for this was from Kyres burning out and in general a lot of us getting busy with finishing the school year and shit. Also the past year hasn't really been kind to any of us, I don't think.

Status update time! The past few months have been slow, and there's been some funny rumors going around. So let's dispel a few and clarify what we're working on. First off, to address the butt of the matter: nothing which doesn't directly require the new map in all of its glory has been postponed or halted. In fact, one core idea of the NBT was to gradually introduce new mechanics from it until It Is Ready:tm:. This is why you saw the gamemodes PR tested in January, for example: while it's a part of NBT (as an idea), it doesn't require the NBT map and as such, will likely be implemented prior to the map being ready. This means that we have some things in the near future to look forward to. Major things include: A new lore arc is being worked on by the lore team. The SCC transformation will be taken up as the next major hurdle. Most of the mechanics for it should already be in place, so it's just coordination exercise to get it done. The gamemodes rework will be restarted as well, with the old PR getting dusted off. All of these items should manifest themselves over the course of the summer easily enough. And perhaps with a few more added bonuses. But what about the map? Well. Progress on the map has been halted for the time being. The development team is gathering for a meeting at the end of this month to plan out an exact course of action on how to restart the progress. More news after this. Any questions and feedback welcome, as always.

@Mcfluff Okay, ssshhouulldd be lifted now properly.

I don't even know how to change this one. ?

Matter of protocol: complaint was originally lodged as confidential but was made public after both parties agreed to it.