VeteranGary

Yeah, this is my primary concern is the conflicting wording which can be interpreted wildly differently. Extreme circumstances =/= Non-standard situations, as you already mentioned. I am generally not concerned with the restrictions on electing interims during standard operations, code green, extendo rounds, but rather focusing on emergency situations. And perhaps a definition of what qualifies as an emergency to supersede these restrictions, such as code blue/red emergencies.

There are a lot of headscratching restrictions when it comes to electing an interim head of staff for what is effectively a temporary managerial role, albeit some more understandable than others it ultimately leads to the breakdown of RP in an unsatisfying and unceremonious fashion. Namely having no other choice to awkwardly back out of roleplay scenario, use of LOOC or admin bwoinks which can entirely halt participation in a round. Doesn't seem very HRP to me, personally and I don't think I've ever had a satisfying experience from the enforcement of these restrictions. First of all, the worst part of this rule is just finding all of the restrictions. So, you want to elect an Interim. You must check; Are they affiliated with any subversive groups, IE Himeo, ALA, or a handful of the half dozen Solarian Warlord fleets. Does their species or subspecies allow them into this role? Do they have a fancy origin that restricts them from command? Doesn't seem awful, right? There's probably one spot where you can find all of this information...except there really isn't. You'll be checking a minimum of three wiki-pages to be fully kept up to date on the rules, and it's a bit of a mess. The Guide to Command is claimed to be the most up-to-date source of these restriction, but it explicitly only contains species restrictions and not the various addendum that also disallow Interim appointment. You must go to every species page, and even then that might not give you the full picture with the intricacies with certain characters. Everything might check out, but their job itself might restrict them from taking interim position such as some owned IPCs. Obviously most of these restrictions go out the window in situations of duress where command cannot effectively function without certain departments having an appointed interim, namely Security and Medical. But even in minor scenarios it makes sense to want to pass interim to someone as some command players simply do not want to involve themselves in departments that they aren't familiar with or doesn't make sense for their character to manage. Now lets hamfist a bunch of unwritten-but-written classism or racism rules ontop of it that they have to abide by no matter what background they come from. It's not even entirely clarified if these rules are something that command knows about ICly or if these are strictly OOC rules that command are expected to display, which somehow feels even more eh? I don't see that being conducive to RP nor the theme especially as we are moving away from that aspect of lore. Anyway, I don't particularly lean heavily towards outright removing these restrictions, but at the very least they should be documented much better if command is expected to enforce these without needing to ahelp/browse wiki every single time they want to elect an interim. Which I believe is something we want to avoid. Personally I think every species besides Vaurca should be fair game for Interim election, as in some scenarios it's just ambiguous. Like not being able to appoint a M'sai surgeon to CMO, because you're Hadii's strongest classist. Or racist. Who knows.

Currently, Tajara have probably one of the most aggressive balance adjustments against them which seems disproportionate to what they boast mechanically. The 30%, 20%, and 10% Brute adjustment that causes them to take bonus damage, with absolutely zero other considerations towards how brainmed currently functions. Brute is the source of all of the scary critical injuries which kill people incredibly fast, compared to burn damage which hardly has any critical wounds beside possibly blood loss, shock induced asystole, or infections. This just leads to pretty much all tajara receiving the worst possible injury types incredibly often in even mundane scenarios such as dropping a crate, getting bit in a hand/foot from a simplemob, or the other common source; combat. Which is likely why this heavy-handed nerf was implemented in the first place. What I find this ultimately does is just makes tajara mechanically adverse to play in any role that might sustain a moderate injury, namely mining, off-ship researcher roles and security. The increased damage leads to faster accumulation of critical and fatal injuries that make anything going for tajara just pointless. You get hit in the hand from a simplemob, stray bullet, all your speed goes into the shitter from the pain after the hit either; fractured, severed tendon, arterial, or all of the above at once. Then you cannot do anything to escape and must commit or die on the spot. Very fun and engaging roleplay, right? Same goes for getting hit literally anywhere else with 90% of firearms, will send a tajara to a medical visit if they aren't wearing a full set of basic/heavy armor and even sometimes that isn't enough. I think this adjustment was done in the days of pointmed/metasec and this holdover doesn't belong in our current setup of brainmed and hyper-lethality. Considerations of what tajara have versus their current penalties; walk speed and nightvision. If we are looking at nightvision purely from a balance perspective, it's not incredibly overpowered as NVGs are practically free some antagonists or one of the cheapest items in the uplink, or they can spend one more BC for flashproof thermals. And NVGs are pretty common in the warehouse circulation, so anyone can potentially have it. Tajara just get it at all times, alongside vaurca. Not really a strong reason to keep this nerf, and there is already a downside connected to this; higher chance of taking eye damage from headshots. And eye damage from flashes, but flash protection is stupidly common atm. Speed, it is really not all that much once you put it to consideration. Their run is faster than most other races, but they trade this for overall distance and a significantly slower stamina pool/regeneration, and poor CQC capability. They have grab mods that make them incredibly easy to grab, and most tajara can barely hold a grab against almost any other species beside Skrell, as well as less stamina to disarm with. I don't think what it is currently is justification to make tajara players be round-ended faster than other species either by medical purgatory or just dying from stacking critical injuries. Pain is already incredibly unforgiving in the current state of brainmed, and usually all it takes is one or a couple good hits against a tajara to literally slow them to a crawl. Right now it's tuned to a point where tajara basically instantly go into paincrit whenever a papercut looks at them wrong, and it's honestly quite annoying. Ultimately I think these value should be halved. 15% 10% and 5% for Msai, Tajara, and Zhan respectively, there is no reason for it to be like this in the current state of medical balance. Personally this feels like an overadjustment from a bygone era of balance; nobody is really playing for metas but instead roleplay.

I can definitely agree on reducing the agony damage a bit as currently it is quite unforgiving. It stacks with the small amount of brute they already inflict and a single shot against an unarmored tajara can almost entirely disable them. Definitely feels like .45 rubbers got a buff at some point when they were armory-only equipment but I can't point to a specific PR that might have changed it. Probably suggest a 25-50% reduction to bring it to reasonable levels. As the .45 sports a significantly faster rate of fire it shouldn't be much of an issue to deal with this as getting follow up shots isn't difficult. Don't think this reduced armory usage outside very light gimmicks usually involving ship-side antagonists, as that is a problem more systemic to other balance choices currently present ingame right now. Such as combat generally being quite unforgiving and extremely lethal, everyone looks to gain better odds of survival where they can.

Bit biased since I asked for this to be tested. I don't think these pistols impacted security a ton. They are still a direct upgrade over the disruptor, but in my experience antags have shown they have plenty of tools at their disposal to deal with security. At the end of the day basic armor sucks against anything that isn't a common pistol. At best I find using my pistol much less, I now have an incentive to look toward other tools at my disposal such as the baton. It's not some super-safe taser anymore so I have less justification on using it against unarmed people. Where as the disruptor I could chase and shoot a fleeing unarmed suspect with basically zero question or consequence. In general I think the environment which .45s were removed and replaced is much different than now. Security tends to be significantly more lenient and RP-focused towards antagonists, up to go along with gimmicks that would have been totally ignored back in 2020. Despite all of this, I still think this should stay around. It just makes much more sense and there is not much justification as to why the disruptor would be chosen over a standard pistol. Every other corporation or faction runs a pistol, and if they run an energy weapon it is usually a carbine-lite over a blaster-type. If you're going to run a taser as service weapon, why make it the worst of both worlds. A service pistol fits the theming much better, especially as security is staffed with corporate mercs rather than proper police.

Title. We are in the future where we already have magic chems that repair chemical neglect from livers, bulletholes in lungs and hearts. And brain juice that reverses traumatic brain injuries. Why don't we have something similar for mechanical organs? I can suggest a few ideas; Nanoline, a cryo chem that slowly heals all mechanical organs and perhaps limbs as well. Could make sense for machinists to have too, for the occasional IPC that comes in half melted to death from their failing coolant systems. Nanite inhaler. Heals only prosthetic lungs. Access ports. Small ports in the chest/abdomen that allows machinists/doctors to access and diagnose prosthetic organs without surgery. Perhaps a unique tool for this purpose, like a diagnostic bore scope or something. Or some generic chem that acts like peri/adip/pneumalin but for mechanical organs.

PR is testmerged. https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/21987

One of the points I like, making security drawing their weapon much more impactful or cause for consideration. You're shooting someone with a gun, so maybe try other options first. Right now most people just go straight for the disruptor, because why not. It's effectively a ranged stunbaton. I would agree with this if EMPs weren't nerfed to oblivion to make IPCs not awful to play. The EMP grenades had their AOE drastically reduced. It doesn't even drain battery capacity of energy weapons, it legit just locks them from shooting for 10-20 seconds. Ion Rifle is annoying to carry around especially for the use of disabling disruptors, has only 4 shots, and has the same issue with EMPs in general. Antagonists are much more better off using a variety of other tactics to counter security's sidearm. If you pull it off, security is going to head to the armory to pick up a beanbag shotgun, .45 rubber, or sabre rubber to appropriately reply. And this line of thinking is already well accepted in the security/antag gameplay loop, usually if security is shooting at someone with anything there is a general understanding that we have reached the midpoint of escalation and retaliation is allowed/expected. I don't think a blaster or LTL ballistic here makes much of a difference, you can fight or just flee if it was either/or. If you get shot enough to break bones, you likely already have entered paincrit anyway. We could still fit the disruptor in some way, it can easily replace the taser that used to be part of security's old loadout. A taser and the .45 with rubber rounds. But obviously this will cause a number of issues such as people just using it to dual-wield which is incredibly OP at the moment. Two projectiles at the same time and practically negligible amount of inaccuracy penalty.

With how non-lethals function in general, a .45 with rubbers is perfectly serviceable even against some armored targets. And typically security has the numbers advantage, aside from merc/mixed round types. However, if an antag prepares properly it can be countered easily with combat stims. Synaptazine and painkillers pretty much renders LTLs useless. I could be wrong about the armory being used less, but I still believe the current sidearm is a contributing factor. There are more reasons that security leans heavily on the armory than this alone. It's a one and done weapon, once it's out you have to find a charger. Instead of having one extra reload to stay in a fight little bit longer.

I have been around since before disruptors were even a thing, and went through their introduction and various reworks over the years. And to this day they are not what was promised nor fully developed into something interesting and practical. Even a proposed rework of them has recently stagnated and probably won't see implementation for some time. I'll list some of my issues with the current state of the disruptor pistol. Blaster-category of energy weapon, which effectively trades the entire advantage of most energy weapons for ballistic-like performance. I believe this was done to make it similar to the .45 it replaced. It used to have the ability to shoot through glass on lethal mode, but this was removed as it made it better than the .45. Wireless-control pins, probably the strangest thing we got out of the introduction of these things. It was never fully realized into what was promised, instead we are stuck with what feels like a half-completed system. It does not really do what it should; prevent the gun being used by an unauthorized user. After the gun is swiped by an ID, anyone can use it until it is manually locked at specific terminals. But the disruptor was never really worth stealing anyway, so this maybe gets used once in a blue moon. And the worst side effect of these pins, restricting lethal mode to Code Yellow/Red, or manual authorization. This prevents anyone bothering to resort to the disruptor as a viable lethal sidearm because it doesn't function on code blue without someone unlocking it. And typically in these situations that require lethal force, the armory is open and the disruptor is replaced with something else. It is not even particularly useful for greimorians because the xenoblaster exists, and has the ability to shoot through glass; the best advantage of an energy weapon. I really believe that security should return to the days of their .45 pistol, with two .45 rubber magazines. Yes, I do agree that this will make security significantly stronger off the cuff, but that's the point. In my experience, giving security a bad sidearm encourages them to lean on going to the armory sooner, and I don't think that is necessarily a good thing. I'd much prefer security officers feeling much more confident and capable of handling some more riskier scenarios by having a better offensive tool at the get go. Currently we have the gameplay loop of security being slightly outgunned and immediately all retreating to the armory. No-one wants to stay on scene with nothing but a disruptor.

Correct, my priority but not a sole focus is the wiki. I have no problems with any other duties the role entails, I believe I already described sufficiently on the brainstorming, editing and writing behalf in my previous responses. As for the news articles, my understanding is that it is a tool intended to flesh out the in-character perspective of events from each of the factions, and explain any significant integrations or developments into the lore. Or just report on the mundane, ineffectual events just to give characters a topic to talk about. I doubt I'd have an issue with this outside of the factions I'm rather unfamiliar of the perspective/attitude of, like the NKA and FTC. With the PRA, it's easy since their news is heavily moderated and you practically only hear the opinions of the Hadii family or the president himself. The DPRA has a council and every member has a consistent take on any issue brought to the assembly. Pro-civgov, pro-ALA, xenophobic/traditionalists. I can't say I know a ton about the NKA to confidently write articles for them. Feudal lore is not my forte. Aside from Shumaila throwing money at her mercantile fleet while her lands are going through rampant banditry and rebellions.

I feel like a decent compromise was used during the Moghes arc, where job roles were entirely unrestricted especially when the crew was going into or expecting known danger or objective. I haven't seen this used since then and it's kind of a shame. It should be the standard for canon events and maybe an option for odysseys. Personally I think it worked really well, it didn't really detract from the event arc to do it this way, and it just allowed a lot more people to participate in general. One of the first few events only had two poorly armed pirates and they still managed to stir chaos for over an hour. Security didn't really steamroll them despite there being about around 10 of us. So I don't agree that it's any balance concern. Forcing the Horizon into this restricted manifest when they are in life-or-death scenarios is very silly. The one advantage the Horizon has literally anywhere is it's massive crew size, but generally during canon events about a third ends up not being able to take part because of job limits.

1. My main interest is cleaning up the wiki, there's a lot of places that can be tidied up for legibility as I described in my first response regarding the Tajaran History page. The main offenders is the years 2464/5 which lists every single news article and doesn't adequately describe major events of the most recent years, which would be the most relevant to current tajara characters. Kind of have to go out of your way to read every article, and find the event arcs on a separate page to get the full picture. Like, the DPRA fielding their first nuclear bomb, and ICBM are just footnotes when it's a huge deal in my opinion. It should be summarized as major event of that year and how it impacts the Cold War, and describe how each side pushes and pulls throughout this phase of history. 2. So I don't find my writing particularly good, often I find myself with good ideas, inspirations or concepts but be completely unable to flesh out or expand in a satisfying and logical way. In a vacuum I'd just consider it bad, but with input and critique is where I thrive. Personally I much rather have review and collaboration available to me. Not sure what else I can add to this question. 3. There should be some more border conflicts in general, mainly with the ALA/PRA borders with the Junta Ahem Kah'nrir, he is probably the last person to operate peaceful border operations. This is the man who believes xenos should be purged from Adhomai, that the existence of the PRA prevents Al'mari's return, and I don't see Nated or Harrlala being able to talk him down for long without having to concede to his delusions. I figure his trust in Nated can only last so long as it innately conflicts with his broken psyche and world view, from the Armistice to Nated entertaining the creation of the civilian government. We could even tie the Tesla Resurrection conspiracy into this as another reason to motivate his decline as he is totally the type of person to misconstrue this into a part of his theory regarding the return of Al'mari. Maybe he played a part in the body being stolen out of DPRA custody, or at least his loyalists. As far as I see it he is a weak link in both of the eyes of the DPRA and PRA, and both sides would be mutually interested in ridding of him, it just needs to be done in a way that doesn't make one side vulnerable. It's time for Izaku's fate to be foreshadowing for Ahem. This would be the easiest conflict to handle as it's rather binary, and pushing an Amohda arc would likely be far out of my capabilities, especially tying in the NKA component into that as I don't fully grasp their lore. But I wouldn't doubt the PRA being interested in providing training or weaponry to the Amohdan nationalists as a way of indirectly destabilizing ALA control of the island, and we already have a militia mobilization taking place here on Chaniska by the head of PSIS. My idea is that generally, small parts/leaders of each nation should be striving to keep the war going but in the background. Not everyone in each nation agrees with the armistice. And then the faces of those governments will have to figure out how to handle this; outing these actors as a scandal and going full scorched earth on their reputation, or blaming it on another nation as a smear/false flag campaign. To my knowledge we have only had one semi-high profile scandal where two Hadiist researchers attempted to defect and failed, and the murderer who fled to the DPRA border. Else the interactions between the nations throughout this cold war have been quite sparse, beside the race to the North Pole.

Ckey/BYOND Username: Veterangary Position Being Applied For: Tajara Lore Deputy Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page?: Yes. Past Experiences/Knowledge: 6 years of Tajara roleplay. Experience in GMing in smaller communities in the range of 5-20 people. Particularly in horror, grimdark, and dystopian settings. Examples of Past Work: I have not been a part of any major additions, changes, or projects in my time in this community. Aside from voicing opinions and feedbacks since I started playing here. - Is there any part of Tajara lore should be expanded, removed, or changed? Explain why. For starters, I’d like to lay out that I don’t come bearing a major project or a vast swath of changes. I plan to take part in polishing what we have, and making it more clear and concise. An issue with Tajara that’s been here ever since I got my whitelist is the bloat of text. It’s hard to even come up with a character with so much going on on Adhomai, not to mention the FOUR off-world communities of varying amounts of substance. (RIP Hro’zamal, most people probably think it’s just a soda brand). I’d like to simply put my efforts into cleaning up what we currently have, my first focus being the Tajaran History wiki page. To which any prospecting new tajara applicant will have to endure is our own scrolling zhan pit, the order and format it displays history can be redone to be easier to navigate. The first six entries could be condensed into optional tabs to open up. Pre-history/Historical Eras while amazing that we even have it, is almost entirely irrelevant to tajara characters in our current setting, outside specific concepts like archeologists. These aren’t vital for even Tajara-mains to know. Not my priority but I could also look into fixing the years of pre-contact tajara. There is something comical about there being a 338 year gap between the invention of steam power, to the first automobile. The nobility couldn’t have been that incredibly stagnating on technical developments, especially if this gap of time is the entire Industrial Revolution equivalent. I get there is supposed to be a theme of noble oppression on technological advancement, but this is a bit much. No trains, no tractors, minecarts, ANY motorized equipment for the workers? For three centuries? And then it's just limited to nobility. I do vaguely remember that the years were mostly just thrown down there to provide flavor, and most of this lore is an optional thing for the historian inclined tajara. But details like this make over analyzers like me to mull over the logic of it. Before I get sidetracked, moving on. Modern History is fine for the most part, until it reaches the server’s timeline, around 2458-onwards. Each year could be summarized into bullet-points of the most important and major events, much like how this section starts before server time. Instead what we have currently is a link to a news article followed by a vague summary of it, it’s a very indigestible format that involves flip-flopping between the wiki and the forums. I still think we should keep these, maybe condense it into another drop-down window. Another addition that should be made is linking the major event arcs that took place during some of these years, since these are unfortunately entirely left out. Ultimately I’d even like there to be a visual aid to display the modern timeline of Tajara history, so it can be looked at to help players understand how closely packed events truly are. I have a feeling some forget, Adhomai was unified for a short time and a majority of these characters would have been around prior to the Second Revolution, either as a child or young adult. But maybe the propaganda is just that powerful. - What area of Tajara lore would you like to work on the most, and why? Personally I lean more towards working on DPRA/PRA lore as that’s where my interest has always laid, I’ve never really had much interest in the NKA unfortunately. There isn’t a singular part of Tajara lore that I have a strong focus for, though I believe that what we currently have could be better. If I had to write a new character application today, without any of my prior knowledge or experience I would be incredibly lost, or maybe discouraged. So my main focus is to fix that, and refine what’s there into something even a little bit more concise without culling anything that’s already there and has no reason to be removed. - What would you like to see in the future of Tajara lore? Frankly, I have no idea what I want to see. As it stands we are locked in a stalemate Cold War with no major developments or conflict. On one hand I like the bitter uncertainty that Tajara lore has been left to dawdle upon. But there is no point to building tension if Nothing Ever Happens, we have all of these setups that have been built up and set in place that I’d like to see through. We have the DPRA/ALA with juntas that all have feuds against another, and the civilian government. Amohda is practically begging to become the site of a proxy war. Perhaps that’s why a certain Headmaster is mustering a personal militia, he is anticipating– or planning. The NKA is busy trying to subvert a repeat of the First Revolution. The pieces are already set in motion, it’s just a matter of when they fall into place. It just seems that we put all of that on pause around four years ago with the Armistice, and as of recently we have only the Adhomian North Pole race as a point of international conflict. Additional Comments: Figured I would try for this, the opportunity is just sitting there. Someone is better than no-one, no? Though ultimately I am kind of offering up just a wiki-maintainer role. I don't consider myself a good writer by any means and it's definitely not one of my preferred hobbies. Though at the very least I think I make a half-decent critic, proofreader, and taj lore aficionado for what that's worth. The only issue here is probably learning to edit the wiki, but it doesn't look difficult. Maybe will take me a week or two to grasp.