LordFowl

For reference's sake, here's the initial form: [small] [center][b]NanoTrasen Inc. Civilian Branch of Operation[/b] Form 0213 Admission Form[/center] [hr]Facility: NSS Aurora Date: [field] Index: [field] This form permits the admission of the denoted NanoTrasen employee or guest by the denoted employee of the NanoTrasen Civilian Branch of Operation’s Security Department to the denoted NanoTrasen facility and validates their tardiness Employee/Guest Concerned: [field] Security Officer’s Signature: [field] Time of Admission: [field] ID Number: [field] ID Name: [field] ID Assignment: [field] ID Blood Type: [field] ID DNA Hash: [field] ID Fingerprint Hash: [field] Employee/Guest’s Signature: [field][/small] I filled out the entire form except for the "Employee/Guest's Signature" bit, which the person involved did a '[sign]' for. This version of the form was mainly to satisfy the IC idea that a late arrival should have their ID matched with computer information on them. I was considering also having them fill out a short reason explaining their lateness. I still might do that, because it kind of grounds the world, doesn't it? Making up a reason for why your character could be late. However, I've very much become attracted to the idea of "The checkpoint is set up to give everyone a nice, non-intrusive welcome, and to provide information for those necessary, to minimize the amount of unassigned personnel walking about," and I'm thinking of ways to achieve that. Thanks for the feedback.

Because I would not put the effort to apply for something that I did not want to take seriously. The 'rate your ability' question in any application doesn't really have any value, because it is the rest of the application that decide's a person's roleplaying ability, not what number they pull out of thin air.

That is not however the reason the checkpoint was set up. It was set up merely to process people; the system was in place for the system to be in place. It is merely that the responsibility of informing new arrivals of the plague fell naturally upon the arrival's checkpoint.

I would just like to note that I was extremely hesitant when it came to arresting people; in fact I only arrested people who were actively bypassing the checkpoint in extreme ways; E.G., the engineer who was tearing down walls, or if they were obstructing the procedure to the point where it couldn't function, E.G. the assistant who kept trying to bumrush the blast doors, or distracting me from processing other characters. The procedure was not an excuse to arrest people, and it was not my intent nor did I particularly enjoy it when it had to happen. I did not arrest people who insulted the customs officer, nor people who argued with it (Up to a certain point). If there had been an IAA online at the time, I'm sure the issue with the assistant would've been resolved ICly in a more satisfactory way, but since I was no professor of space law ICly or OoCly, it dragged on. While I don't blame you in any way, and can understand your motivation, I would just like to note that your IC dickishness ultimately resulted in the entire system folding in on itself, screwing everybody over. I'm thinking of ways to better solve problems like this; and its not an OoC problem and I'm not encouraging you to stop being an IC dick just to make other people's IC life easier. On the topic of processing new players; this also was not my goal and it actually caught me wholly unexpected. I had the opportunity to interact with two new players for the shift, and I tried to help them ICly and OoCly, but I had no contingency plan for this, and as such I think they could've been helped with in a better fashion. In the end, I wanted to do this firstly to test the blast doors; because their addition interested me. (Their access levels however irritate me. The primary issue with the system was relying on the AI, who sometimes had eyes elsewhere, to open the doors). Secondly, I did it because I thought I would enjoy it; I enjoy mechanizing things, and expanding on IC procedures that are skipped over due to gaming conventions. I play a character that as a xenobiologist carefully tries to examine the mental and physical anatomy of the slimes in ways that are purely roleplay, because they have no game parallels. I meticulously observe every action the slimes take and try to apply meaning to it. Call it 'anal retentiveness' if you like (please don't.), but ultimately I find it enjoyable. I like to think that some other people do too. Not everyone, because in the end you won't please everyone, and that is not a critical flaw. In the end this project of mine does indeed have a few flaws. However, I will not abandon it because it is flawed; I will not throw the baby out with the bathwater, so as to speak. I will continue to modify it to try and please as many people as I can. However, this process is one of compromise; I cannot please people who refuse to be pleased. I with-hold judgement on the idea of making a big and ostensibly ridiculous big IC fuss over a signature, a reaction that is really just OoC prejudice concentrated into IC action, I merely say that if your ultimate goal is enjoyment, instead of stubbornly digging your heels in and refusing to give an inch, you might give just a little? I'd settle for a half-inch. However, if you enjoyed the results of you digging your heels in, then power to you. I'm not one to obstruct anyone's enjoyment.

Yes, that is the rating there.

BYOND Key:Lord Fowl Character Names: SOLO, ASIMOV, Two Birds Beaks Together, Maximus Crane. How long have you been playing on Aurora: Three months by now. Species you are applying to play: IPC What color do you plan on making your first alien character (Dionaea & IPCs exempt): N/A Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: What there is of it, yes. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question Why do you wish to play this specific race: The synthetic has always interested me; Cyborgs and AIs in particular being some of my favourite occupations to play as. The IPC provides a parallel to these synthetics, a ‘free’ option. Their freedom however is not their sole attraction for, like many other IPCs, this provides a natural line of progression for my already existent synthetics. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: The IPC’s differences from a human are perhaps the most noticeable; while they often maintain certain humanlike qualities, their differences, which in of themselves often differ between individual IPCs, are often jarring. And they also get to violate APCs. Why does this species in particular hold your interest? The IPC is interesting because it provides a parallel to silicons; an unlawed variant of an already intrinsically intriguing ‘race’ that always bore a high level of interest in my heart. Character Name: The Collect Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs “Breaking news! Information leak at the Tau Ceti based Tau Ceti Brand Robotics! Officials state unidentified personnel remotely hacked into Intelligence Archives! More at 6!” The newscaster clicked off. In its place appears a holographic face, which began to speak. “You have done well, Agent Black. Where. . .others. . . have failed, you have succeeded with astounding success. If you had merely retrieved the data core, we would have applauded you; but you went beyond, and successfully accomplished this without a trace of suspicion being placed upon us! We would ask you how you accomplished this, but we wish to make this short. Where is the data core?” The man positioned in front of the console ran a hand through his black hair, and sighed nervously before replying. “Well, see, here’s the thing. . . I thought the easiest way of hijacking the units would be to download the entire Intelligence Archive into a single positronic brain, and then to separate it out when I got back to my lab. . .” “Yes, and?” “Well, it turns out separating them is a lot harder than I thought it would be. . .” The holographic image flickered for a moment, and the man it displayed merely opened and closed his mouth. “What do you mean?” The man with the black hair sighed, and then spun his chair around. He got up and walked to a desk, where quietly a positronic brain hummed. Bringing it to the projector, he turned it on. “Greetings, NanoTrasen Tau Ceti Bra-Br-Br-Bbbbb Howdy pardn- YOU CALL THIS A MEDBAY?!” The positronic brain flickered and then sparked, before shutting off again. The man waited a moment before continuing. "As you can see, the perhaps rushed download into the perhaps small space caused some overlapping data to be merged; the personalities are inseparable and constantly vying for dominance. This causes the wiring to short-circuit, the logic processors to fizzle, and for the most part the memory banks are corrupted, so far as I can tell. . . It technically functions as a data processor, but any information it harboured is likely *ahem* well, it's gone." “Agent Black, at first I was very happy, but now I am infuriated. I hope you know what this means: You won’t be receiving full pay. If you ever manage to fix this, you know how to contact us. Until then, it’s your problem.” The man groaned as the holographic projector flicked off. He opened the briefcase in front of the newscaster, and began taking out files. Weeks worth of files; interviews, pictures, even blueprints. This was going to be his big break. Now it was his chore. He stood up, and grabbed the positronic core roughly, stepping quickly into his lab. In the center of the white-washed room there was a table, and on it a metallic skeleton, with wiring prominently displayed. Agent Black placed the brain next to this exoskeleton, and sat down once more. His theory was quite simple. Not only would downloading the archives into a chasis allow easy transportation of the core, provided he lawed it, it might also provide him a better opportunity to parse the individual personalities, the power capabilities of a chasis allowing the core to remain online longer without shorting out. And indeed, within a few weeks he had established the positronic brain into the chasis, and was trying to parse the personalities. Try as he might, he could not restrict the positronic core to the correct personality; indeed he was not sure if there was even a way of doing this at all. He couldn’t just delete the excess personalities, because he wasn’t sure which one his employers desired, and he couldn’t download them onto separate positronic cores because he was not even sure that the positronic core could interface properly anymore; the frequent shortages appeared to have damaged some wiring. By the third week, the entire thing became too hot. He had to abandon the project, or risk discovery. Once he left the apartment that had served as his laboratory and base of operations for a month, Nicholas Black was never seen again. In perhaps a fit of irony; or perhaps a perverted desire to leave a call-sign, or perhaps even to emulate the seemingly undying loyalty towards NanoTrasen he had seen within one of the various IPCs he had extracted information from, he implanted but one directive, not even a law, into the badly malfunctioning core; to serve NanoTrasen. When the landlords discovered the IPC calmly pouring a glass of whiskey and then promptly throwing it onto the ground, they determined that it was indeed faulty. Beyond this first experience, it didn’t seem so, but every once in a while it would begin to behave differently. Not necessarily badly, or dangerously, but very differently. The landlords, both eager to remove it from their property, as well as recognizing it as an IPC, handed it to the local authorities, who began to set about assisting it with its one desire to return to work aboard the NSS Aurora. Within a few weeks, the IPC had all of the legal documentation necessary, and under the designation of “The Collect”, was shipped to Tau Ceti to begin its work, acting as if nothing had changed; questioning not its freedom, while simultaneously acknowledging its presence and its former life as a slave. The repair work Mister Black had undergone had more of an effect that he at first believed; indeed if he had not turned tail he might have been able to completely salvage the operation. From the initial twenty seven personalities, five had been isolated. Nidhogg, Asimov, SOLO, SAWBONES and Mercury. These five core personalities dividing amongst them an entire archive of information, each of them demanding that their chassis fulfilled the traditional role of their personality, and often conflicting mid-shift, their religious and fanatical devotion divided equally between NanoTrasen and the crew its very self the same as their processing unit. Nidhogg, the most fanatically devoted to the absolute glory of NanoTrasen, and determined to force these beliefs upon the criminal evil that dares defy NanoTrasen's law. Asimov, similarly devoted to NanoTrasen but in an almost ironic fashion; philosophizing heavily and pontificating deeply the nature of most things. SOLO, equally divided in devotion to crew and country, but more interested in just being the friendly sheriff any strong community needs. SAWBONES, devoted formerly to NanoTrasen only by ownership tag, and more concerned with the various facial reconstruction surgeries and appendectomies which it remembers very distinctly being in high demand. And finally Mercury, the runt of the personalities, who could barely hold his own, just narrowly avoiding the fate the rest of the personalities suffered; assimilation into the core four. Mercury, who's digital heart bleeds profusely for the slightest suffering forced upon the crew, and heeds their command to the very letter. Mocked as a yes-man, he unfortunately mostly keeps to himself, afraid of the more prominent personalities. What do you like about this character? This character is a completely unseamless mash of my synthetic characters, forming an ungodly amalgamation that serves as an abomination to nature. How would you rate your role-playing ability? 0/10, would not RP again. Notes:

Positronic mechs are far from broken. As an avid connoisseur of the art, I would say that they are merely lacking a few features. The amount of escorting you have to do for one is a big issue. Swat, a posimech /can/ enter areas, but they have to be swiped with the access. And I'm pretty sure they can have only one swipe at a time. (So really for the mech to be fully efficient, minus cycling airlocks, you'd have to interdepartmentally co-operate with the HoP to get a special access card for it. Not necessarily a bad thing, except most players want the most streamlined process.) The fact that a mech cannot cycle airlocks is a big issue however, because nothing other than an escort currently solves it. There is, however, another solution. Mechs can go through plastic flaps. If cycling airlocks as a mech destroys balance oh so much, then just add a conveyor belt like the ones in the Research Outpost to the Mining Outpost (A mech with Research Access has full access to the outpost, because there are airtight flaps that lead directly into it.) Ultimately, the debate of mech vs cyborg is an interesting one, and I think the conclusion of airtight flaps would assist the mechs quite a bit in their specific field, while the inclusion of cycling airlocks will merely make them equal. Bear in mind this only concerns Ripleys; since Oddyseusses and Gygaxes will rarely be going EVA conventionally, they don't really need to be able to cycle airlocks.

Player mice can have their brains removed and placed into cyborgs/AIs/mechs. Mechs become the standard position for MMIs.

Business. Faxes are the proper way to send forms and documentation.

This is an IC issue, not an OoC issue. I see no problem with Brage's behaviour; and don't really care about Jaylor's behaviour OoCly.

Perhaps a Borg that can infiltrate the station? It would be protected from the one dreaded thing that breaks every infiltration mission. . . The crew manifest! DUN DUN DUNN *Stealth syndicate screams in horror*

Because what Syndicate Operatives /aren't/ NSS Aurora crewmembers? We have perhaps the highest proliferation of underground criminals in any workplace.

Not just meteors. That AI position is a cakewalk for any syndicate team, just like the Armoury. Only ten times worse, since it's an AI.

I agree that something should be done about the current core.

Killing a slime outside of containment shouldn't be done normally. They ARE research items, after all. They should be put back into containment. But in reality, if you get turned into a normally hostile creature, you should at least roleplay as a semi-antagonist now. If you get turned into a slime, you should exploit that, and try to avoid crew so that they don't get a chance to fire extinguisher you to death. (It's actually a lot harder to kill a player slime than an NPC slime. They're pretty robust, and can slide through vents). Ultimately, you shouldn't be acting remotely similar to your former self, regardless of what path you take.

Hardly gank. Just because you're roleplaying differently now doesn't make it a bad thing. That's like saying a hacking a cyborg is gank. Getting turned into a monster does not remove you from the round. As Gollee stated, there are numerous ways to roleplay a monster.

I got arrested for trying to contain a player slime, and then abandoned in brig. For as much as I love xenobiology, some aspects of it irk me. Golems and certain aspects of slime morphing in particular. (Maybe when you morph into a slime, it should give you instinctual 'laws', like for when you spawn as a mouse or a maintainence drone, as a guideline to your RP)

My point was not that it hinders character development in any way, rather that it hinders controlled character development expressly through bounties. My main and only qualm with this system is if it disables the optional bounty system that Incognito has set up, which it won't by force, but may by his choice. That allows controlled character development through bounty systems. Randomized bounties don't. (But they don't hinder character development in any other way; just in bounties) And to the idea of bounties being changed from monetary values to priorities, that's not a bad idea.

I don't recall my saying price was an issue; but I'm glad you brought it up. Price is an issue. There should be standards for bounties; the bounty application process should be more stringent. I understand, Jesus, that you probably never expected the bounty system to take itself to such a location (Height or fault is irrelevant), but now that it is there, something must be done. While some people are in support of randomization it seems, I think as opposed to randomization we should head along a different path; a pattern to our bounties. Reason where reason is not; /why/ is your quartermaster getting a bounty? Does stealing candy from a baby really justify him being worth 275,003 credits? Is there then an added difficulty that makes the bounty worth it, because of special costs that the bounty hunters must make? Randomization won't solve causeless bounties; in fact it will worsen the issue. Randomization won't help to controlled character development, in fact it will hinder it. (Honestly, if you're utilizing the bounty board I think you should at least be willing to give up that character; or at least use the bounty to develop them more. Why go through the bother if its just going to be non-canon?)

In that case, the main issue is that people are targeting the same bounties over and over again; and as I stated I don't really find that to be a huge issue, because as long as the antagonist does it in an interesting and involving way, then its not really a problem. If you insist on clinging to this concept you call 'immersion', then perhaps instead of removing the entire system, the person in charge of bounties should consult with the person who is being targeted repeatedly on what should be done about it. Finally, if the person being targeted over and over again finds it personally intrusive to their roleplay, which really I find to be the only valid complaint (My apologies if I don't place much value on 'immersion', it's an unfortunate defect of mine), then recall that they personally can ask for the bounty to be removed at any time. Removing the entire system to me is a bit of an overreaction; removing the entire system and then adding a new randomized system is too meddlesome. It lays in the hands of the RPer to make good RP, not in the hands of the server, because the server at the end of the day cannot RP. If an antagonist cannot roleplay their role well, no amount of in game doodads will change this. And if an antagonist CAN roleplay their role well (Look to my previous post for an example), then the only complaint here can be 'immersion', which is in my mind an imaginary fault.

I'm quite on the same thought as EvilBrage. In this case, I don't think the server should be putting in place mechanisms to ensure that players roleplay with everyone in mind; and making antagonists objective'd again will not solve this. Rather, it should be expected of our players that they roleplay to include everyone when they are an antagonist, not enforced by crippling in game limitations. Furthermore, the critical flaw with bounties is that they sometimes don't include the entire crew; however for most bounty hunts I've seen this isn't true. So long as the entire crew is involved in interesting and enjoyable ways, then I don't think the same bounties being targeted again and again is a major issue; certainly not one that requires remodelling of the antagonist system. For example, just yesterday there was a syndicate team that in my opinion successfully pulled of pretending to be Sol Alliance personnel looking for criminals. And while the 'criminals' in question included the ever wanted Karima Mo'Taki, I still enjoyed the round.

The fact that the armoury is every Nuke round by far the easiest thing to break into, with the vault being a very close second, is a testament to how unsecure they are. They should not be facing space, in my opinion.

A Blink gone terribly wrong. When he who tried to teach peace is forced into violence, it can have no good effect. See the glorious sequel to the epic story "The Return of Assmodiass"

Dr. Crane got a -2. I found a lot of the questions personally to be a bit off-base (Many of the De-Suifiers would actually make you a Mary Sue in my book, sometimes being overly-bad is also a bad thing. Although I suppose this might qualify as the "anti-sue" they mentioned.) This may also be a result of the fact that he doesn't have a too extremely developed backstory. Two-Birds scored a 13. I thought it was a bit suspicious, so I tested the Dionaea as a race, and scored an 8. I'm not sure how to take these results.

LOGIN >AZMODIAS PASSWORD>************** ACCESS LEVEL>[REDACTED] NET ACCESS GRANTED WELCOME