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From: Investigator Minerva Dwenn SUBJECT: Information about the Lighthouse and Tartarus Hello, all. Recently I conducted interviews with a former Outer Eyes affiliate that we rescued prior to the fight at Tartarus. Security has a transcript that is available for necessary parties if they wish, but here are the basic notes that don't seem to be posted on here already. The Lighthouse is shielded by a wall of violent gravitational anomalies that can, quote, 'tear ships apart'. The Lighthouse is almost always guarded by at least a single vessel. The Lighthouse is a purpose built fortress. This means that it is going to be much harder to assail than anything this crew has seen previously. All of the Phoron distributed by the Outer Eyes eventually has to make its way through this location. Additionally, we have some more tidbits about what Tartarus was doing. As mentioned previously by Captain Marino, Tartarus had test subjects that were experimented on in order to turn them into psionic conduits. This, however, is not the only thing they were doing. Test subjects were also 'conditioned' , essentially synonymous with brainwashing. This made them conducive to following any orders and could even push them to violence. This means that any people rescued or captured from Outer Eyes control should be watched very carefully. We don't know how far this conditioning goes, these people could full well be powder-kegs waiting to go off. The experiments at Tartarus also extended to trying to find a way to make the Psirens survive their trip across the Spur. This apparently included removing parts of the brain, such as the Bovinae, and storing it with the Psirens as psionic food for the journey. Apparently, this had 'promising' results. As I said previously, anyone who has proper authorization (Command, Security, and anyone authorized by Command) can view a transcript of the interview whenever they want. I have a copy, and there is one posted in security on the board. Stay safe, everyone.

The screen shake on the ship maneuvers is so violent that I actually cant even see my character on screen

Are there going to be space based contracts or is it going to be entirely ground-based? Stuff like take out X pirate ship, renovate X station etc.

I really like the new change to the gameplay loop and generally like the changes to the departments as well. I'm a bit iffy on the surgeon and phys merge but then again I've not played the new gamemode yet so I can't say its a bad idea without it being tried due to how unique the new situation is. I ESPECIALLY like that Fabrication is now what science should have been. It gives them a reason to exist and makes it much clearer as to how they are actually useful. Science doesn't usually do any actual research, they just study things we happen to come across. Codifying it into fabrication is a net positive for the server and all science characters. Based. I do have some concerns about the structure of command and how the corporate character limit works. So, with this chart and the explanation of command, I do worry about the absolute power the CO is now going to have. Namely, if someone makes an extremely evil CO and tries to force a good character to do morally reprehensible things out of nowhere, will the good character then be forced to either do that thing or just be shitcanned for the round? It could end up placing a limit on characters in the sense that playing 'good' characters with boundaries will become very difficult because the mere concept clashes with any CO that happens to desire war crimes today and is willing to dumpster anyone that doesn't go along. Is there still going to be something akin to the captain-level decision to remove them that heads of staff now can do? It also leads to my next question, and I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before so my bad if it has, but is there going to be a CCIA equivalent? Is there going to be regulations for what the crew of the Diamond can and can't do? This is also in the interest of keeping sane rational characters from just being bullied every single round with no recourse by more insane characters. You can rely on the Head of Staff for the department to figure it out, sure, but what if that head of staff is also some tyrant? It could make certain departments completely unplayable by people not interested in the more balls to the wall social conflict depending on what characters are around. I understand that one of the goals is to make criminal characters more justified, which is fine, but I do wonder if that means overt criminals are going to be walking around. This one also concerns me, because having not only a limit on what jobs can even be corporate, but limiting slots on a limited slot job based on corporate affiliation is going to mean that playing your corporate character consistently could end up being extremely difficult because there's now two roundstart rolls you have to win; the general roll for a slot and now rolling against other corporate characters that want to play too. I think it would be much better to just stick to limiting what jobs a corp character can be and not halving the slots for the round of that job based on corp/freelancer status. Especially because we have long rounds and a lot of people can only play, like, one a day.

Name; Jaquelyn Roberts Job: Surgeon Content: During the expedition to save the Elyran military personnel, I had the chance to ask questions to one of the survivors, one Thaili Ewing , who had some information on what's going on in Meropis. Apparently, the Outer Eyes themselves are having a civil war with each other. This includes the mass execution of civilian workers and was apparently just horrific in general. Additionally, she claimed that the Eyes are attempting to incite a war between Elyra and the Empire of Dominia. This is, well, a big claim, but she said that the Eyes are the ones that stole 'The Ghawar'. I have no clue what the Ghawar is personally, I've not been following the news. She was more or less saying that neither Dominia or Elyra was making the inciting actions of late. it was the Outer Eyes. Finally, she claimed that the Phoron is not coming from the Sea itself. She referenced 'The Other Side'. I couldn't get her to elaborate on what that is. Keep in mind that all of this information is from someone who was trapped in a cave with monsters for three days. I think there has to be some merit to it, but chances are something might be a bit skewed here.

Ultimately playing a criminal character you kinda just have to accept the fact that sooner or later there's a decent chance you get caught, and that could mean losing your character. It's just a risk that runs in the territory. Some people see that as part of the fun. Whether or not your character gets thrown into the blender depends on what they did. Petty to moderate theft? Probably not a full deal ender. Smuggling drugs to an outside port? Yeah, you're screwed. For a service character you could start with the more questionable drinks like the ones that involve blood. Try the stranger things and the stranger people will eventually surface beside you. Keep in mind that food and drinks if playing bar/kitchen are inherently inconspicuous if you are dealing with them. I regularly drug people as my chef without even trying. I leave a warning note about the psilocybin and everything. You can probably get away with quite a lot.

I doubt taking this away will lead to everyone on the server wholesale not playing the game. This hasn't always been a feature and it worked fine before it was added. Besides, still having the amount of players readied is fine. This proves my point. People look at the bot and then don't even interact with the server if they don't see the manifest they want. People might decide to give it a go anyway if they at least have to boot up the server. All the bot serves to do is discourage people from actually joining the server. As it stands, barely anyone currently readies up anyway to begin with. Most of the server already waits for after round start to decide on joining.

Right what it says on the tin. I think we should nuke specifically the manifest feature of the discord bot and the ready-up details that shows characters and their names (the number of players readied can stay imo). Why? Because I've noticed quite a few rounds where there would be around 10-15 readies, then a lot of people evacuate if one of the departments (usually sec) is an overwhelming majority. I'm not saying sec is the problem here obviously, I'm saying that people tend to look at that list and make their decision to join purely on whether they see names they like or not, and pop for the day dies in a fire the moment there's a round with no readies. This isn't anyone's fault, that's just how people work. Similarly I think people look at the status on the discord bot and decide not to boot up the server because of the same reason. At least if people boot up the game they will be more likely to just join the damn game anyway since they took the effort to launch it.

Name: Jaquelyn Roberts Job: Surgeon Content: While we were all an Port Volturno a large amount of us went to a mass at the Chapel. Right around this time, somebody planted an Outer Eyes flag near the church. That doesn't feel like a coincedence, obviously.

As an XO player I would actually quite like the ability to spy on expeditioners at all times with my beady little eyes

I think skills might have accidentally borked necrotic surgery. When trying to remove necrotic tissue you can either amputate the entire organ or stab them directly in the head. No in between.

I've noticed that it doesn't seem like surgeons have the points required to fix mechanical organs. the second tier of robotics doesn't allow it and damaged augments/organs are pretty common in the department, and the wiki chart states Surgeons are able to do so. It means that if there isn't a machinist available (there usually isn't) then people just have to live with super damaged augments.

Ironically I think the fall of the megacorporations will make it a lot easier to give them actual impact. Without owning everything, they will have some level of desperation, which is enough to jump to rash action in order to stay afloat. They can still have influence in the new galaxy, and iirc the plan isn't to snuff them out totally. It just means busting the chainlink and making everyone be out for themselves again. I like the new gameplay changes, primarily the contract system and the independent ship setting. That too makes corporate characters stick out more, since they won't be the default anymore. It also makes it so that the Captain doesn't have to bend to the whims of the corps anymore either, leading to more reasonable and believable responses to any espionage bullshit that would occur. The Corps being less all-encompassing actually helps them here narratively, in my opinion. I'd say my biggest hangup with NBT2 would be rendering Biesel and Earth uninhabitable. I think this is a mistake since it would cut down a LOT of good lore and make it a narrative dead-end for both planets. I would rather greatly damage the planet (Biesel, I wouldn't have a say on Earth of course) and force it to go through a period of transformation, not too dissimilar to what happened with Xanu. I have a rather unique idea for this that doesn't directly involve just 'the planet gets bombed everywhere' that I don't want to spoil here. If I can't change the fact that Biesel the planet is getting screwed, I will instead make it as interesting as possible.