VeteranGary

Very well, I'm fine with most of these compromises that come along with this. I may have some input on the mechanical aspects as this goes forwards, as I agree with certain drawbacks such as repairs. Though other proposals are a bit underwhelming, making the limb more flimsy, fragile seems a bit backwards both mechanically and thematically. As far as I understand at the moment Aut'akh limbs have almost no unique differences ingame opposed to normal ones, unless there are plans to be in the future. Even then I still think the complicated repairs is a fair downside to accept as a lore-backed flaw. As for the time frame, it's likely going to be shortly after the Horizon exits the sea so about a month or two from now.

At the present leaning towards the latter. Yasir can find himself relating with the very structure of Aut'akh communes, from the familiarity of communal society common amongst Adhomai. Down to their persecution for practices seen as subversive by Th'akh and Sk'akh, as an individual who finds himself nonconforming to Tajaran society. Sort of like a home away from home it's the community that he finds himself allured towards, and strives to integrate willing to be an active participant in the day to day practices. To the best of his ability as a nomadic aspirant. Faith in the Aut'akh faces some contentions that he must internalize with time such as some core aspects, while mostly symbolic(Sinta'mador), lacks the connotation of where aliens take place amongst their beliefs.

No worries, I'm actually fine with this. Looking into this myself I did kind of find it strange of the laissez faireness of Aut'akh prosthetics which didn't incentivize me to go into great detail of why he's looking into this. These are not mass-produced but rather custom and handmade for each individual user as these are meant to not only to augment but to respect the soul that will partially inhabit it. No room for messy handiwork. But to digress, there are a couple of justifications that stretch into Yasir's past before seeking comfort in Aut'akh beliefs. Living through the Second Revolution and experiencing it first hand, imprinted a grim outlook on the aftermath of war. Maimed veterans and civilians alike frequently fell on deaf ears, the then ALA lacking solutions or compromise that persist into the current day. Holding firm to isolationist ideals and lacking the logistics to undertake such an issue, many such individuals found themselves on the bottom rungs of society. An example that he will live to fiercely protest becoming a part of. Yet despite this, chose a line of work that continually finds himself on the wrong side of a gun. How ironic. As previously mentioned, he sustained a significant injury during his tenure aboard the Horizon. Unable to medically clear for work prosthetic replacement was brought onto the table through his employer, Ringspire at the time. His back was to the wall in the matter, lacking a support system to extend medical leave nor risk termination at the next performance review. A bittersweet means to an end, garnished off his paycheck. Whilst it allowed him to waive an impasse on one hand, it left strong uncertainty on the other. An open-ended question that lacked a satisfying answer. Enter Alarzoeh Has, an unlikely but pivotal figure which Yasir finds himself confiding with. Someone who can provide glimpses of an reassuring outlook of the meaning and purpose prosthesis' hold. Instead of a replacement where the body failed like spare parts in a machine, but rather continuations that the self may accept and inhabit as a whole. When the time arose for consideration of a mechanical arm, Yasir was strongly empowered to be certain it was done by personal choice. Wanting desperately to distance himself from same circumstances of his GES, being turned into a living lien. Or being an advertisement to a corporate line item. Rather, he chose the newfound support system that he lacked three years prior. Convenience was off the table from the get-go.

BYOND Key: Veterangary Discord Username: garold_ Character Name: Yasir Kra'jun Item Name: : Aut'akh Right Arm Item Function(s): Like any other prosthetic limb. Item Description: A common design amongst Aut'akh communes that favors functionality and ease of use rather compromising for pure augmentation. Why is your character bringing this item to work?: Unfortunately, he isn't a nymph and can't leave it at home. How did your character obtain this item?: Yasir has the social network to both source and facilitate the procedure, from personal connections and colleagues. What value does this item have to your character, and what story does it tell?: Personally, since I started playing this character I had a knack of keeping track of every injury he sustained during canonical events. It's a way of documenting Yasir's experience, development, and in general it's a great way to portray how story arcs leave lasting marks on an individual. For example, one of his most grievous injuries was a freak friendly-fire accident that almost left him dead on a frigid ha'rron infested hellscape, ventilated by a tank machine gun. In turn, he was out of work for months and had to receive prosthetic lungs to re-qualify for work. Lately the spur has had it out for the rest of his appendages, Moghes giving him gunshot wounds to each of his hands. And recently yet another friendly fire incident tore through his arm, adding another traumatic injury to the list. Chronic pain, muscle tremors, and exposed scars that persist to cause discomfort. Giving him reason to contemplate the options laid out to him; pain management, various forms of biomedical and physical therapy, all itemizable to either hike up insurance fees, or carry long-term health complications. Sprites: N/A Additional Comments: Likely not getting this until the Horizon is back in civilized space, and there will potentially be a round where he gets this installed in the future.

I rather it function more similarly to the chemical contamination we already have, instead of sticking to clothes/items just have it stick to the mob. You can already be soaked/doused with a chemical and depending what it is, effects you differently. Acids burn, fuel will set you on fire if near an ignition source. More consistent with pre-existing mechanics and simple. Think it's fair that if you go through a cloud of phoron and leave, you can still be potentially flammable. Maybe requiring cardox to safely decontaminate as water would probably react badly with phoron.

Title. I don't have a ton to add to this, but it is just plainly an annoying mechanic. Inconsistent, outdated, and just not fun to deal with. Contamination cannot be removed through any means besides using a washing machine which only a few exist on the Horizon. Some in medical, and some in a locker room on deck 3. Anyone exposed to the two things that can cause contamination which is only chlorine and phoron, assuming they survive has to discard all their stuff and go to medical. Or if they are unlucky and go into paincrit, their clothes they cannot discard will simply slowly burn/poison them to death. In general the mechanic is just not maintained. It only functionally applies to phoron and chlorine gas leaks, where as other chemical or radiation hazards are not covered by this feature at all. So while it is niche, it's an obnoxious step added ontop of already extremely dangerous hazards, being chlorine and phoron. Both of which can kill you extremely fast already. I think a fair compromise for the case of chlorine is just making it toxic to stand in without a suit, similar to phoron but not as urgently toxic.

I believe the best tradeoff is changing certain categories like combat to allow you chose to be worse at in favor of extra points elsewhere, and the baseline being no-downsides or only minor penalties. Don't think we want to gatekeep it to the point that a non-security character is effectively food for someone's K/D ratio. Otherwise I think most skills are in the right place, where certain mechanics only make sense for specific brackets of crewmembers to know how to do, such as piloting, engine management, research, etc. Not being able to do CPR without medical skill seems to be an outlier, the best approach we should stick to is still allowing people to attempt certain actions they lack the skills/experience for, but be less efficient or more risky. Might also be neat to make it possible to possess a single professional combat skill, though I am not sure what it even gives you since it is currently unobtainable outside of antagonists. Surprised something like an EVA skill didn't make the cut yet. Could be generally useful like making internals/jetpacks more efficient, slightly better movespeed in voidsuits with and without magboots on. Able to don/doff faster if we ever implement an equip delay to voidsuits instead of insta-zipping them on. And less chance of slipping in 0G. Maybe as an option under Everyday/Occupational.

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