furrycactus

Yo same.

The following news bulletin blinks open on each Eridanian device and visual implant connected to the extranet. 15 . 11 . 2462 PRIORITY NOTICE MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF FIVE AND THE SOL ALLIANCE. In breaking news, a few days ago the greater Alliance of Sovereign Solarian Nations announced to the galaxy that Prime Minister Michael Frost was found dead within his suite upon Unity Station in the Sol system. As the news was made public, the Board of Five were quick to convene with the Alliance’s political representative - Governor General Mei Luo - with whom they are now prepared to address the Eridani Federation. We now cross to them, live. Connecting . . . MEI LUO, a middle-aged woman of Solarian descent dressed in a black suit, stands at a podium. A small pin with the emblem of the Sol Alliance is attached to her suit jacket. Emblazoned on the front of the podium is the same emblem, but larger. She is flanked by all members of the Board of Five, and behind them, a white wall with the Eridani Corporate Federation logo. LUO: “Good evening, citizens of the Eridani Corporate Federation. It is with a heavy heart that I address you tonight. Our head of state, Prime Minister Michael Frost, was found deceased three days ago. This is a devastating loss for our nation as a whole, and we implore everybody to remember him how he truly was; a hero, for the people of the Alliance.” MEI LUO pauses for a moment, as she flicks through a few papers on her podium. LUO: “We are confident in our accusation of Zavodskoi Interstellar for their hand in this heinous act. Rest assured, justice will be secured. For now, I will hand over to the Board.” MEI LUO folds up her papers, and then speaks once more in Sol Common. LUO: “For the Prosperity of all Eridanians, and for the Sol Alliance.” MEI LUO steps back from the podium with her papers, leaving room for Amon’s corporate representative; KALI AKERELE. AKERELE stands at the podium, her posture rigid and firm. She speaks succinctly, with a self-assured tone. AKERELE: “My fellow Eridanians, the news today is grim, but it is certainly no cause for alarm. The Federation will carry on as it always has; hardworking, prosperous, and above reproach. We will aid our esteemed Solarian colleagues in this deal, and ensure the continued wellbeing of our nations.” KALI AKERELE turns a page as papers rustle in front of her for a moment as well, before she continues. AKERELE: “Also, some of you may notice an increased presence of our Private Military Contractors in the coming days, whether in the streets or in your workplaces. We assure you, as always, they are present only for your safety and protection. Be sure not to interfere with any of their operations, and follow any instruction given by them to the very letter. That will be all. Thank you.” The feed fades out, fading to black, until a ‘Replay’ icon appears over it. Translations available in: [Tradeband][Sol Common][Tau Ceti Basic]

So, like, what people already do in their custom medical records?

If we're entrusting only some command but not others underneath the Captain, then I feel we're going to be on a slippery slope for elevating certain heads of staff above others, and that's not how it's meant to be. Sure, on other servers there's a "chain of succession" or whatever and a ranking of importance, but all members of command on the Aurora are supposed to be on equal footing and importance, just with different areas of expertise. Saying "only HoS and maybe RD" pushes us only further to that idea that the HoS is the second-in-command, which simply isn't the case. It should be all or nothing. Saying "I wouldn't trust a single CE with the knowledge" is getting into a more subjective matter, because I know several HoSs that I wouldn't trust with the knowledge either, and several RDs. I think general knowledge about it is fine, but actual operation should be limited to the Captain/Acting Captains informed by an AI.

Hydroponics looks better more opened up like that. I have a suggestion for switching up the choice of turfs, though. The neon green grass turfs are outdated and too garish on the eyes, so ideally we should stick with the slightly more muted ones. The wood in the side room and on the borders looks nice though, though we should keep the grey metal tiles down the main walkway and the middle of the room, otherwise it makes hydroponics look too garden-y, which doesn't fit so well with the sleeker sci-fi plant tray stuff, not like the garden on the surface level. The floor decals in the kitchen part look nicer. Overall this looks neat by the way, I'm not trying to deter you here or anything. ?

I have a few concerns, the first being much more simple than the others; 1.) You should break up the solid chunks of red decals on the white tiles, as these are some huge and solid blocks of colour. Alternating them might be nicer. 2.) I'm not a fan of the state of hydroponics in this at the moment. Turning it into a loooooooooong corridor-type workspace feels a bit too... impersonal, I think might be the word I'm looking for. It looks like it was just designed for pure efficiency à la TGstation, and like it was done as an afterthought with whatever space was left. It's also supremely cramped with so many 1-tile-wide segments, which is admittedly a current issue with the current layout, just in different ways. 3.) The stage is missing, and furthering this, there isn't really a centralised area for parties or celebrations anymore, not for a lot of people anyway. One of the advantages of the current setup is that there's a huge area for people to be seated and to gather if there's any form of celebration going on. (Also, when christmas comes around, the current bar gets rearranged into a gigantic U-shaped table with a christmas tree in the middle, there wouldn't be enough room here for that, but this concern is probably the least important of them all).

I'm neutral on the retro-futurism vs. sleek futurism debate, but I have to agree with doc wholeheartedly, I don't think they need an on-mob sprite, they just look huge and clunky. It's just nice having a utility item that doesn't add a huge block of pixels onto your sprite, especially since they don't seem to play nice with any uniforms.

As far as I'm aware, the accents system was more or less viewed as all that was going to be implemented in terms of language bloat, so it's unlikely that we'll be getting a considerable amount of new languages with that in mind. That said, I personally would be on board with this, but we'd need the input of the rest of the human team and the unathi team.

T'WAS I WHO SET THE BLAZE THAT MURDERED HE, AND I'D DO IT ALL AGAIN IF IT WEREN'T FOR YOU MEDDLING KIDS.

Given that hearing aids already exist in the loadout for deaf characters (and they work with intercoms, stationbounced radios, etc., just not headsets (literally just take a stationbounced with you and you're golden)) they could more feasibly work in just about any role now.

This makes it sound essentially like a mandatory undertaking, so I'm not a massive fan. Plus, cargo already has pretty rigid responsibilities to fill the High Priority phoron bounties these days (3 full gas canisters, 110-130 sheets, etc.) which is already a considerable undertaking with the phoron scarcity, and is nearly impossible on lowpop. If you don't have mining around on lowpop then engineering will be in a bit of a bind if they're trying to run the SM, it sounds.

One of my favourite things about Engineering is that it gives you a lot of free time to RP after the important stuff is done, so I don't think we should add anything that's essentially mandatory to do. However, adding optional side things for engineers to do is something that could be cool. I can't list any immediate ideas off the top of my head, but I do know that other servers like TGstation have a much much more robust atmospherics system, for instance, with a much larger amount of gasses that can be fun to make and do fun things. https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Guide_to_Atmospherics#The_Gases_and_Their_Functions Not suggesting we make a direct port of absolutely everything there, but it could be a good source of ideas for things for Atmospheric Technicians to do after roundstart, as well, perhaps. For example, adding hydrogen gas (which could be used for the SM like Baystation) and giving it conditions to be able to be compressed into metallic hydrogen, or given to Toxins for bomb making, or to make ammonia crystals for ??? selling at cargo or something. Or tritium gas, which could also be compressed into tritium bars, or used with radiation collectors to generate research points (only relevant if Geeves' gradual research system goes through), or also for Toxins. Or pluoxium to make people feel helpful with refilling internals tanks and stuff. Or freon to make hot ice if you're crazy enough to also sell at cargo. Heck, their atmospherics system also allows for fusion, if you're crazy enough to make a fire that's hot and dense enough. Not saying that this is all stuff that should just be a copy+paste port, but it's an example of some extra 'optional' things we could look into to give engineering (though really Atmos in this case) something to do if they feel like it.

I dunno he's kinda kringe. I've been RPing with him for years now, not just on Aurora, and I think he's spectacular at it. Also, I think he's more than trustworthy enough to be able to coordinate a department and make sure that new players to his departments get taught how things typically operate. I've no doubt that he'd do a good job, and I'd like to see how he goes on a trial.

This is a necessary aspect for cyborgification. Cyborgs literally have brains stuffed into an MMI. So do some AIs.

Articulated much better than I could've put it. One of the biggest appeals of actually playing medical is being a doctor. If we move away from this, we're effectively alienating basically 100% of medical characters, or forcing the players to have to come up with a huge justification for such a sudden change in employment. All of them. All at the same time. Also moving away from medical being doctors pretty much invalidates a majority of IAC characters as well, who are doctors, practitioners, and medical workers, not biologists and researchers. Really not something I'm keen on the idea of. Not to mention, this will basically become redundant when the NBT comes around. When we're a self-sufficient ship floating through the isolated dark of space, then yes, we're going to need general practitioners and physicians to do the standard checkups, because people are going to be living there (plus, this is already fun roleplay on the Aurora? I don't see why we should squash it). I don't see much point introducing something that we'll have to revert down the line, on top of the earlier fact that we also just reworked this stuff one day ago.

Totally fine with either its entire removal, or locking it behind an expensive TC cost which means the team has to commit to it. "X or Nuke" rounds are fucking garbage, and often the nuke is leveraged over the tiniest shit, such as "hand over the dog or we nuke station", for example. Having it be there just encourages people to drag it along just because, and it's pretty poor RP, honestly. Props to the merc teams that don't just drag it around and leave it firmly on the shuttle, but yeah, remove it or lock it behind a huge TC cost.

Completely on board with this, I guess I overlooked this earlier.

Considering we literally just pushed the most recent rework, I'm not hot on another rework that overhauls literally everything all over again. I was more or less on board with the other changes, but this kind of just feels like changing things for the sake of changing them. Everything just got nailed down, we shouldn't go and throw it all to the wind immediately again.

I can get behind the white jumpsuit for the EMTs, and also I really really really really like the green jacket. If high-vis stripes could be put on it, that would be perfect. I advise against using blue colours for medical uniforms, however, because the Aurora medical colours are represented by the colour green, while blue represents the Interstellar Aid Corps. The bags are alright, if a bit bulky for my own liking, but that's not so much of an issue; however, Doc was right, they don't particularly mesh with our existing bags. Also, you should perhaps consider spriting Satchels as well if you're doing Backpacks. I think this stuff looks good over all though, and is an improvement on what we currently have.

I think it's neat, however, while I understand the colour differences myself, I'm not sure there's actually enough "waste" types to warrant having several different colour disposal bins, so it may just confuse a lot of people. Yellow for sharps, certainly, but we don't exactly offer things like chemotherapy on the Aurora, so purple for cytotoxic for instance is a bit redundant, and doctors don't really throw out unused medication either. Nor do we really make much use of radioactive substances, so red would also be unecessary (unless it was tucked in chemistry or something as a place to dispose of radium? idk). The redesigned sharps container though, spectacular, I think it could replace the red box no issue. Blue for general non-hazardous medical waste could also be fine. Also the orange clinical waste bag is fantastic and good, it'd be worth maybe adding the orange bin to place the bags in.

Here's the new chart for surgical qualifications as well, by the way. As a note, this only applies for surgery on organics. Robotics staff can perform plastic surgery and shrapnel removal on synthetics, but Physicians, Trauma Physicians, and Surgeons cannot.

I did more thinking and ultimately I think changing the names is probably a good idea. That being said, I do think some of the names are a little goofy, so we should maybe brainstorm some new ones. I'll do some thinking myself in the meanwhile.

Yeah, adding on, the psychologist relocation is also going to be a hard no from me, too. You're still medical, mental health is just as important as physical, and psychologists need access to patient medical records because that's where psychological and psychiatric information is stored. Chaplains, counselors, etc. meanwhile do not need and should not have that information.

As somebody who primarily mained the Trauma Physician role before IRL stuff started bogging me, I'm pretty sad to see that it's gotten the axe while I've been gone. I'd chime in with my own input, but SadKermit has articulated it perfectly. The role had distinction and a clear thing to it; you were the primary handler of patients in critical condition, you took the patients in shock or asystole, you oversaw the ICU and made sure triage was being adhered to. You made sure patients became stable before you handed them to surgeons or nurses for the non-life threatening things like fractures or painkillers and discharge - and notably, like Kermit said, you stasis bagged those that were particularly fucked, you made sure anyone else was tended to, and then you got the whole team together, communicated, and formed an in-depth plan for how everyone can synergise to treat the bag boy. Some of my absolute favourite scenarios in Medical happened in situations like this, where you worked with the whole team to hammer out a plan of action, and nothing beat the adrenaline when the bag was opened and everyone went into sync. When you got a team of three to five people all working together in an OR to keep the patient alive, even if they died, those scenarios were some of the best - and the roleplay that followed after, regardless of the outcome, was always fantastic. Like Kermit said, the change to stasis bags effectively removed arguably the best part of the Trauma Physician role, which left them not all that different from regular Physicians, despite the general expectation that you're still supposed to be the one handling the critical cases (which I think should still be enough argument to keep them around regardless). I'd personally think the role should make a comeback, along with un-reworking the stasis bags, or at least tweaking them to be more viable to use again. As for the age for surgeons, well, it seems fine to me, but I do empathise with the people who have to age up their characters to keep playing the role.