wowzewow

Well, I was thinking it of being more of an opt-in thing. You don't have the obligation to answer it, but the option is always there.

Sounds good on paper, but I don't really why this can't be done on an unofficial capacity. Main concern with Staff bloat isn't going to be particularly benchwarmers and braggarts, but most likely the administrative overhead. Having a dozen or so quasi-officiated mini-mods is going to be another thing moderators and admins have to keep track of. And I don't particularly like the idea of picking favourites in the community. You are either part of Staff, or aren't. It carries a certain amount of responsibility that necessitates this sort of division. As for mechanical mentoring, I do not think this is necessary. Aurora already has a reputation of being one of the most forgiving places to learn SS13 mechanics in, namely because of the low stakes and low intensity gameplay the consistent Extended rounds provide - we don't particularly have round-the-clock fragging that Goon or /TG/ does that neccessitates this. As for lore mentoring, we already have the Lore discords. I'm not a Loredev by any means, but it's been the forefront of Lore Team community outreach, and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. However, I am not opposed to implementing a Mentorhelp system for /all/ current staff, Devs, CCIAA, Lore and all. They have chosen to invest a large time into Aurora, and are more likely to be able to help with any, if not all issues, aformentioned Mentors deal with.

This is actually against the rules. It is not allowed to name custom items after departmental uniforms. If there are any missing suit sensors, or alternative uniform types that are lacking, then please request for them to be made.

Of course, no problem. Perspective, for the most part, and this is two-fold. I have a fresh pair of eyes only someone from a wholly different background could only provide. Speaking of which, my tenure as a developer has greatly improved my judgement on what is possible for lore-related things - whether it should stay on the wiki, or could be implemented some way or another in an event or what-not. I know what works, what doesn't, and what to do to make it work. I'm very cooperative - I'm open to feedback, compromise, open discussion, anything goes, so long as it's reasonable and feasible. Well, I'd like to reiterate that this is only a small part of what I plan to contribute content wise in my tenure as a human lore deputy - it's just one of the more prominent examples that I've given the most extensive thought over. It's only a small part in what is to be a greater project to mostly unite and improve all of human lore's planets to be up to code and more standard with one another, such as Pluto and Europa, for example, which lack a Culture section - not to insinuate there is a lack thereof, but perhaps needs more elaboration and categorization. Some planets have different methods of categorization, some with different styles of writing. Some have their history near the top, front and centre, Elyra has it near the bottom. It's rather headache inducing, especially given the herculean task of comprehending the entirety of Auroran lore, and I plan to amend that. An improvement I'd like to add to most, if not all planets, would be short Character Creation Guides, outside of the OOC "This character is from a region of X, and is enforced by administrative staff". Most of our gameplay and natural exposure is not with the planets themselves, but the characters that come from them - hopefully this will seek to eliminate "Biesel syndrome", where players are more comfortable in making more adventurous characters, knowing that they have the approval of the lore on their side, rather than passing remarks and advice from the Discords. Another major part of lore I'd like to expand upon is how faction interaction affects the minutae of daily life on the Horizon. Space opera is fun and all, but doesn't pack as much of a punch as I'd like to. There's already inklings of factional interaction on the Horizon already, for instance, the rivalry between Biesel and Sol, Dominians grouping together for events. There's a lot I feel that can be explored, and make selecting one's faction have a much greater impact - perhaps Dominians would look down on Coalition of Colonies' people for being welcoming to IPCs? Bieselites, Elyrans and COC members being all buddy-buddy from their shared heritage of being freed from Solarian authority? Not to mention all the non-human factions I'm omitting. There's a lot of unlikely friendships, conflicts and player interaction that can stem from this, as well as real-life geopolitics we can take inspiration from. Perhaps a faction relationship chart would be in order, but I digress. To elaborate on Americentric, I am not referring to being focused on the United States, the country, specifically. My main point was more focused on American cultural zeitgeist, namely as a basis for the main point of view for writing other cultures, being the baseline, "generic" culture. It's not entirely anyone's fault, but it just so happens due to the nature of the fact that a portion of lore writers, present and past, are American, and are used to writing this way. I've gone over this in more detail in my response to LVS, but again, it's akin to the Aliens, Weyland-Yutani style of writing that focuses on how Japan/China would affect the United States primarily - joint colonization, corporate mergers - "this is how X would affect the US, therefore, this is how X would affect the world as well." rather than how each country would seperately interact with the world. It's hard to explain, but it's a bit of a disconnect from how Wikipedia presents itself in more of a diplomatic, United Nations-style globalist and neutral style of writing. I'd like to again reiterate that I am not of the view that the entirety of the lore is as such, only parts of it. I can see the sentiment, but for the most part, my duties as a developer and Spriter are far divorced from writing lore - even for helping out with events, I am mostly there to discuss feasibility and the in-game mechanics of such, rather than having any involvement in how the event or greater repercussions in lore, or any arc that it resides within. Although I can understand how one may draw similarities from Developers and Lore writers as being "creatives", I believe it wouldn't be much different from having a member from the Administrative staff be a Lore writer, and as before, there have not been any issues with them.

Seeing this as already addressed, locking and archiving.

Voting for dismissal

This is powercreep, literally. Textbook definition. We don't need an arms race of continually adding weapons to each and every job. Miners are already balanced around KAs - having shotguns also inadvertently fucks over Antagonists as well, intentional or not, because KAs are balanced around doing little-to-no damage in atmosphere. Arguably, you could order guns as Operations, but that requires going through the bureaucratic process, which keeps it in check. Just nerf the speed and damage of the simplemobs. Either that, or as Carver said, reduce the spawn rate. Voting for dismissal.

I like the idea of protists, actually. It helps to tie into the "life-seeding, last common ancestor" vibe that Diona have going on. It also helps that protists are more general - rather than trading a plant pidgeonhole for a fungus one. This can help to expand the baseline Diona and allow them to really pick and choose what to get from both plant and fungal life. Hell, some can even specialize towards one path or another, which ties into the Diona growth theme where they slowly find themselves and their place in the universe. Some can specialize depending on their origin, too. Perhaps they have the ability to graft foreign lifeforms to themselves, in order to replicate it. Like a Skrellian Diona, who is adapted to aquatic flora, has blue blood and synthesizes Dyn. Again, this really opens the floodgates for new Dionae subspecies, if the team chooses to do so - one can choose to specialize towards plants or fungi, a bit of both, or something new entirely. This will also hopefully prevent retconning past lore, just with a few minor adjustments.

Changing to being fungi-based is a really drastic and fundamental change to the well-established identity of Dionae. Being plant-based symbiotes with fungi would achieve similar results proposed in the document, while still preserving their plant based origins. A more fungi-focused version of Dionae would work better additively as a sub-species, rather than a complete replacement.

1. I should've specified : "a sizable chunk" was a gross oversimplication, I apologize for that. Let me preface this that this isn't like a lack thereof of representation in the planets, no. The Human Lore team has done a wonderful job of incorporating new and diverse planets with name/cultural background restrictions. Some need some polish, but for the most part, they are fine in what they achieve. This is mainly directed towards Biesel, Mendell City, Sol, Earth - Dominia, to a lesser regard, the "generic" origins, in that regard. Rather than Anglo-centric, I think a better term would be Americentric, in the cultural sense - the example would be the backported Bay lore, the Aliens-reminiscent Weyland-Yutani/SolGov writing that "oh, Japan China's going to take over the economy, and half the world!" And I feel that there's a lot of wasted potential here because, in lore, at most, are switching a round a few names of important people and places to Japanese/Chinese and calling it a day. Understandably, Dominia has it's own thing going with it's monarchy and planet stuff, so there's less focus on that. Despite this, I don't think it would be very difficult to implement - elaboration on how someone's heritage and/or culture influenced their decisions, how congregations of ethnicities created special regions, etc. would be a major improvement to start with. Then, we can look forward to adding more diversity if it makes things more interesting or helps to explain things better. 2. If it were up to me, I would change the human sections for Konyang to be more of a greater representation of the Sinosphere, namely balancing the extremely Korean-sided planet with other facets, mainly with Japanese and Taiwanese culture. (I say Taiwan here, despite it not existing in Earth lore, because it is more well-suited for what it represents culturally for Konyang - Mainland China's culture can be expressed through Sol and Dominia.) There is a definite demand for these - we've had a consistent, albeit sporadic amount of Japanese and Chinese characters, so I think it would be worthwhile to work to improve their ability to create these characters. I understand that this falls within the purview of the IPC Team, so I look forward to working with them in this project. Understandably, since this is a Human Lore application, and not an IPC Lore application, I will provide Gadpathur as another planet to improve. Namely, the other cultural and characterization aspects, such as South Asian cuisine, it's myriads of vegetarian meals, Sports, a modified version of Cricket as an example, and expanding the non-military aspects of it. This is mainly to allow people to create more complex and multi-faceted characters, rather than being pidgeonholed into a one-dimensional "Anti-Sol" archetype. Again, this will be not limited to Gadpathur - I look forward to updating the other planets as well to make them all equally as good. 3. First and foremost, I would write a pre-emptive warning in a news article, as well as in the event information, that should one choose to bring their Solarian character to the event, that they would be liable to conflict, combat, and potential death. Gadpathur is a militaristic and jingoistic planet, with a very clear modus operandi, so it should be readily-available information. Secondly, to prevent needless heckling and antagonization, I would make it so the SCC is withholding something important from the Gadpathurians. No comment on what it would be, but the important part is that the main liasons are the heads of staff and the Gadpathur chain of command. Gadpathur, with it's rigid top-down military management would immediately snuff out any insubordination and would force its people to give begrudging respect to any Solarian SCC crew. However, the crew not completely immune - the Captain's main goal would be securing the undisclosed deal with the Gadpathurians, so they would still allow troublemakers to be arrested under Gadpathurian law. Third, I would make use of mapping discrete zones mainly for the safety of Solarian crew - should they choose to venture deeper into Gadpathurian soil, passing border inspections and the like, they would consciously subject themselves to a higher level of caution. If they choose to stay at the docks, then they would be completely untouchable, sure, even though they would miss the action. It is not about preventing death, per-se, but more of whether one's death felt earned, and I feel that contributes to the frustration of canonical deaths.

Ckey/BYOND Username: Wowzewow Discord Name: alsoandanswer Position Being Applied For: Human Lore Deputy Past Experiences/Knowledge: I've been playing since 2017, with a short hiatus in 2019 and have been developing for Aurora ever since. Examples of Past Work: I've had a hand in a rather decent chunk of lore arcs, some minor, some larger. I've also had a hand in working on the Wiki as well as assisting in some lore-relevant PRs as well. 1. Why are you applying for this position and why do you believe you would make a good Human Lore Deputy? I'm mostly applying for Lore Deputy because the scope of the work I plan to do precludes me contributing on a small scale. There are many pages I'd like to update, rewrite and maintain. Communication with the Human Lore team would be a huge boon to me as well. I believe I'd be a good choice because I'm a very pragmatic and realistic person. I've got a wide depth of experience I can draw from such as my experience developing and wiki-developing. I like to do my research, with a focus on quality and consistency. I'm no stranger to dirty work that otherwise wouldn't be done from my tenure as a developer. 2. What is your favourite part of Human Lore and why? What is your least favourite? (Note: If you submitted something that was canonised and is now part of human lore, you may not select your own canonised submission as your favourite or least favourite part of the lore.) I profess, it's a rather personal favorite of mine - it's New Hai Phong. It’s very tight and well-written in the ethnicities it’s supposed to represent, with equal focus on all of them. The mixing of languages, and the knowledge of subject matter really oozes from the writing. It's a shame that there haven't been many characters from this planet. There's a lot of potential from this planet I hope that can be realized in the near future. On the other end of the spectrum, is Gadpathur. The majority of the page is dedicated to being a vehicle for the Interstellar War and its effects, rather than a proper representation of it’s peoples - the Cadre system is a very interesting piece of writing for its culture (perhaps as an evolution of the caste system), but is very bare bones compared to Port Antilla, for example. There's nothing wrong with it, per-se, but it's not a very conducive page to write a compelling character, unless you want to do nothing but talk about the War. I could say the same for some other Coalition planets - they're rather dry in terms of character creation, but understandably, they are also rather new, so I feel they just need a little while longer in the oven. 3. What are three projects (medium to large sized additions, reworks, or arcs) you would like to do or help organize if made Human Lore deputy? (NEW PLANETS OR FACTIONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ADDITION AT THIS PRESENT TIME. DO NOT INCLUDE THEM IN YOUR ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.) 1. Improving asian representation in lore and character creation in general. For the most part, a sizable chunk of lore is very anglo-centric. Granted, I can't fault people for not wanting to write about places that are a complete continent away, sure. But that's just all the more reason for me to go "If no one else is going to do it, then I will." I've been pointed to New Hai Phong, Gadpathur, Vysoka and Konyang whenever I ask about it, but I still find them unsatisfactory. (I also plan to improve representation across the board for everyone else as well. I'm just starting here because it's where I'm most familiar with.) Ideally, most of the Human planets should have the ethnicity disclaimer and at least a small character creation guide as well, to encourage people to step outside of their comfort zone and create a new character. Sol Common, for example, has a passing mention of Mandarin Chinese and nothing else. Dominia has chinese surnames, and other than passing mentions of people with chinese names, they aren't really elaborated upon. Same with Konyang, which, despite expressing how it represents Chinese, Japanese and Korean ethnicities, is predominantly Korean. However, I'm unsure to what extent falls under IPC team's domain and what falls under Human team's domain, so I'm going to refrain from making any concrete statements for now. 2. Updating human languages. They've been egregiously un-updated for the longest time - take Sol Common, for example, which is still (mostly) a word for word copy from Baystation. The sheer amount of factions, planets and origins far exceed what our current languages can handle, and I think it's high time we get to work on adding some more. I've kept a close eye on this, and I've seen some pretty interesting suggestions on the forums, as well as discussing this topic at length with other loredevs, so I think this would be most prudent. We can also look into categorizing and organizing all the accents properly alongside this as well, since their numbers have swelled dramatically over the past few years. 3. Making planet pages more consistent and the New Player Experience. As of now, planets are rather unbalanced in how they are displayed - some are massive, taking minutes to scroll, while some are tiny, with a few paragraphs of length. Which really muddies the importance of from whether a planet's actually really lore relevant or that someone felt really passionate about writing about a certain planet that day. Ideally, they'd follow how Port Antilla is structured as a cookie cutter template - better examples may exist, but basically, with a predetermined Introduction, History, Government, Culture, Military etc. categories, it's mostly just a fill-in-the-blanks for other planets that are missing them. In addition, for New Players, there should be a "ethnic" character selection section, perhaps on the Earth or Human page, or a completely new page by itself. So let's say, you wanted to make a Eastern European character, it'd point you to Visegrad, with some disclaimers here and there. It'd save space for the cookie cutter "This is enforcable by OOC action", as well as provide a convenient place to point new players to when they are making their first character. 4. What do you believe are the current strengths and weaknesses of human lore? Why? What would you do to improve upon the weaknesses? One of the largest strengths and weaknesses of Human Lore is it's massive and absolute scope. You can basically write anyone and anything provided you have a proper origin - however, many of the planets have varying degrees of depth to them, causing a square-peg in round-hole syndrome where characters end up picking rather "safe" origins such Biesel, for example, rather than a more tailor-made origin because their planet of choice isn't well developed, unsuitable for their needs, or simply too obscure. Sometimes, some planets aren't even that bad - it's just that sometimes their formatting or writing style makes them hard to read. It's why I mostly don't plan to add any large chunks or arcs as a lore dev, because there is already so much already. I think we really need to work on "trimming the fat" instead. Adding onto this is the varying degrees of quality of planets and factions - some are home-runs, passion projects that have cemented their place in the server. Namely, the Eridani and Dominians - Well written, and very popular for good reason, with a lot of memorable characters coming from them. On the other end of the spectrum, there are some planets and sections which are either simply unmaintained or just a means to an end for other purposes - maybe because the person writing it had left the team, or no one wanted to write for them, there are plenty of reasons. I don't blame anyone, that's just how volunteer contribution works. Unfortunately, this can lead to a negative feedback loop where it boils down to "Why write for a setting that no one will play; why write a character for a setting no one will develop?" But I'm not going to be completely nihilistic - I also believe in "If you build it, they will come." I've seen people make concentrated efforts in trying to break the mold in making characters, using the myriads of origins, skin tones and custom clothing, and we should serve them better. Hopefully, when I join the Human Lore team, I can start working on bringing up the rest of the planets up to scratch, as well as uniting the different writing styles from our laundry list of past contributors to be more legible and easier to understand, with my experience in formatting and organization. I'd love to do infoboxes for each and every planet, honestly, down to the very last insignificant detail of whether they drive on the right or the left. 5. What are your thoughts on the past arcs that have been organised by the human lore team? I've unfortunately haven't been able to attent many events for the sole reason that my timezone typically makes them fall on a ungodly hour of 7 in the morning on a work day. However, I've managed to play for a bit in the "Steel on the Horizon" event, and I think it was a rather interesting event, taking in mind of what was currently possible at the time. 6. What is an idea for a future arc that you would like to have a part in writing and organising in the future? (Note: If you provided an arc or arcs as part of your answer for question 3, you may expand on the ideas for that arc or arcs here, or you may provide another idea.) Pragmatically speaking, a Gadpathurian arc would be one of the more exciting planets to host events on with our current server's resources. A mainly underground bunker-base military installation planet which matches majority of our assets to map to host exciting combat-oriented events. With one of the more well known premise of the Solarian War as a backdrop it'll be easy to follow and be invested in. Hopefully, with my timezone, maybe in future, I can work with staff the on same timezone as me making non-peak hour events as well, which would be interesting. 7. Have you ever been subject to any strikes or bans of any kind from Aurora's moderators or admins? If so, how long ago were these actions and what were they for? A ban from the Aurora Discords for some rather embarassing Relay posts I'd rather not talk about.

I still think Science/Research department should still exist, however they should be mapped closer together with Operations. I've been playing around with the idea of a big remap, and this is one of them. Ideally, the departments would be shifted around so that Science and Operations border each other, with the Machinist right inbetween them, with Medical bordering Science at the top - Engineering taking the former place of Science. Intersecting all of the three departments, Science, Operations and Medical would be another interstatial elevator with a small "Expeditions" room where people can gather up and prepare for expeditions : Science can be the eggheads working on Xenoarchaeology, Miners can dig up stuff and do some combat with their KAs, and Medical keeps an eye on people's safety.

As a spriter, I'd say : It's possible. But it's a lot of work. Not to mention whether people would use it in the first place. I'm not really sure if the amount of people using it will justify the cost.

Medical discourse is inherently baked in the same toxic rhetoric, and everytime there's a nerf, I've seen it used over and over. "Nerfing medical means people die. Dead people won't have fun. Why are you against fun?" "Why are you making things unnecessarily obtuse?" "People will die because of your decision. Why are you punishing people?" This happened when cloning was removed. This happened when cryogenics was nerfed. This happened when brainmed got added. People died, and medical powergamers cried bloody murder. People will HAVE TO DIE. That is a GOOD thing. Without it, there are no stakes. It's why we have canonical deaths. It's why we have self-preservation rules. I find it maddening how it's so hard for some people to reconcile the fact. Imagine if a cave geist was about to maul someone to death because they decided to explore on their own, and then medical just pulled them out under its feet and healed them to full. Now imagine this with some players exploring maintenance and running into the entire group of antags. Suddenly, it is acceptable for them to escape with their lives.

This is a terrible idea! Ideally, you'd want points of interest to be away from the center of the ship so that people will spread out and actually interact with the rest of the map! There should be NO additional draw for people to gather at the center of the ship - it inherently draws people in because it's the center of the ship! It does not need anything else! From my perspective, the new map change to the Horizon has, in a way, eliminated some of that Main-floor-itis that had plagued Aurora, in which everything literally just happened on the 2nd Z-Level and every other deck collected dust. Right now, things are getting better! With the popularity of the Idris Cafe, it shows that Multi-Z Level Roleplay spaces can work! And sucessfully, I might add! Regressing to Aurora-style mapping is not good! We've barely had this map for a year or two, it still needs to be developed further! Also, as a fair warning, this will remove/gimp Patience and the Stargazer. I don't particularly have any strong opinions of them, but they've been a hotly contested part of the new map, and I don't think it's wise to throw some kindling into that fire again.

Added to the game, locking and archiving

Though I think this is an okay idea, as a developer I can't really condone adding a new machine entirely dedicated to a single tailor-made purpose of just fixing lungs. This just makes more stuff that's required to map in. However, I wouldn't mind having more *alternative* pathways whilst using existing things. A great example of this is being able to use syringes to re-inflate collapsed lungs. I think adding a new respirator function to sleeper beds/stasis beds would be a better implementation. Hell, maybe tweak cryogenics again for once so it's actually useful for once and not ignored completely.

It's going to make it much harder for staff to keep track of age, species and job age restrictions. Unless this is properly coded with all of the loopholes patched up I'm feeling a strong no, even though I think it's quite alright as an idea.

I think this is still worthwhile to pursue. There was also a definite adjustment period to the 3/4ths update with adjustments to the tiles and general look and feel, and it was pretty jarring at first. I think this update is a net positive. Just give this a week to get used to.

Ah. You don't really need to invent an entirely new item, then. (And I probably won't accept it since they're duplicates.) You just need to make sprites for a shoulder/sleeve variant of the current flagpatches. I can code a verb/toggle that makes it so you can change where you put said flagpatch, and a toggle in loadout on where you want it to spawn.

We already have flagpatches that achieve the same thing. Apologies.

You could just write them as a radical sect of the Aut'akh ala Luddic Church/Luddic Path from Starsector. With antagonist factions comes a reasonable amount of lampshading for the sake of gameplay.

Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): Small Species: (Skrell, Tajara, Human, Vaurca, Dionae, Unathi, Synth, General) General Short Description: A fleet of SCC/Biesel ships trailing the Horizon How will this be reflected on-station?: Somewhere for escape pods/the escape shuttle to go to. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Not to my knowledge. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team? Yes. Long Description: Odin and Biesel were general "anchor points" for characters. Back then they were used as convenient lampshades or places to keep and/or develop characters nearby the Aurora without writing them out. With the exodus from the Aurora (HAR HAR HAR, GET IT?) we have lost this ability. With this proposal I plan to see a generic "fleet" of ships that trail behind the Horizon, taking the mantle of the former Odin/Biesel. These will not be full replacements, but will carry the same function. Likely a large command ship, some smaller engineering and research vessels, and a decent security convoy. Now, this raises some questions - why, during ship combat/disasters, does this fleet not simply help the Horizon? Because that would be largely boring for gameplay. Because they are deliberately a few parsecs behind - the SCCV Horizon is intended to be a semi-secret forward scout/research vessel for Phoron (similar to the Aurora) Simply bringing the Horizon along would bring too much public scrutiny. Anyway, that's basically my pitch. I've yet to hammer out some salient details or whatever, but I can work with Loredevs on this I suppose.

On Razortail : The Razortail faction currently in lore is under the Aut'akh, so if need be, this can be re-written a bit to fit under the Aut'akh and expand upon the existing Razortail faction. Also would help with the rather lacking history section - rather than having it being built from the ground-up, it can use the existing Aut'akh history as a springboard. I'm rather fond of building upon existing lore, gives it more depth and closes up loose ends for factions to exist. It's up to Rusting to make the call though. On Gorlex : Honestly if you google Gorlex right now the only hits are a bunch of unrelated pages... and the /tg/ wiki page and THIS THREAD. If anything else, I'm fine with using Gorlex - it sounds great, and /tg/ isn't doing much with it anyway. Even better if we one-up them, do it better and claim it for ourselves. Would rather do this than the name sounding like ass because someone else got to it first. Overall, I think this is a pretty good idea. Hopefully down the line we can get antagonist groups of the other species as well, rather than have Unathi fall to Vox "Antag Species" syndrome.

I think ribs can withstand the same treatment as the skull, since it's one of the more hardier bones in the human body. Would be less punishing for CPR bone breaks too. To elaborate on calcium as well, it should work very slowly, however, it will *never* cause misalignment. Again, enough that people won't be running to get milk to repair their bones, but at least have it as a viable alternative. Ghetto surgery is *extremely* neglected, and I hate to see it getting shot down again. Anyway, I'm retracting my thoughts on having a dedicated bone chem, but please have the name be something painfully obvious.