NG+7 Gael

I'd like to second basically all of the OP. Being someone that plays a BC character, I frequently witness odyssey rounds during which Command will do their best to keep people outside of the "main 3" departments (security, medical, engineering) from participating in the round's gimmick. Odyssey, as it currently stands, is often simply treated as "Secret 2.0, featuring away missions" rather than what Odyssey was supposed to be, which is a way to get more people involved in the round gimmicks. I will also push harder on the idea that Command shouldn't be barring people unless there are extremely good reasons as Hazel mentioned above; this is not a matter of 'realism' or needing for it to 'make sense', we are roleplaying, and that means that- as a Command member- you should be doing your best to include everyone that wants to participate, even if you need to bend things a little. This is extremely simple to do in practice, all you need to do is ask for volunteers for the odyssey mission and let anyone who wants to participate, participate. There's no need to send a team down first to "confirm" anything, and upon hearing of danger, prevent anyone except first-responder and engineering characters from participating. There is no need to try and think too hard about it 'making sense' or 'being realistic', these rounds are non-canon. All you need to do is let people participate if they want to do so.

If I could've kept Aurelien alive and received nothing in exchange for his participation in the event, I'd take that over him dying and his name being in a memorial. What I want is for his death- which again served zero purpose in the event and was not at all a consequence of my own action- to have some sort of meaning. A memorial with his name mentioned is barely anything, but it at least means that my character that I spent nearly a year playing exclusively wouldn't have a meaningless death followed by being forgotten in a week.

Statistically, yes, it makes sense that Humans would be the most played species for any role. I should clarify- as I realize my initial statement needs the clarification- that I, and I think most people in the thread, don't mean to say that non-Humans have more rounds played that Humans, but rather that currently, the established Aurora XO characters that people know, who are consistent, and who are played regularly are mostly non-Humans/Skrell. Obviously I don't know every active Aurora character, but as someone whose previous and current character (both of which are/were, at the time of writing, my only active characters) were BCs, I can very much say that I, personally, have mostly seen IPCs and Unathi XO characters. All of the currently active XOs that I can name off the top of my head are IPCs or Unathi. I'm not disagreeing with the statistics, but I think that the statistics don't tell the full story.

Gonna be totally honest, I don't see how this change does... anything positive, really. This doesn't make the XO 2ic, because they don't even have elevated authority- XOs could already be assigned as in charge of whatever by the Captain or by command vote, or simply be in charge of departments as needed if there wasn't already a command member active in the department. While this change technically means the XO has more responsibility within lore because they know the nuke codes... this is entirely irrelevant to just about every round, and more importantly has absolutely zero effect on canon RP. All of this comes at the cost of deleting basically every active XO character, because most of them are IPCs or Unathi. I guess the staff have said they are deadset on making this change, but I really think it should be reconsidered, because this doesn't actually do anything positive.

I don't have a whole lot to add that hasn't already been said I think, but I definitely do have things to say on the topic of an in-game memorial and that sorta stuff. I absolutely believe that Aurora should do more to mention characters' involvement in events and canon stuff. It's a good thing with very few downsides, as many other people have stated. I entirely agree with the whole thing about players who have contributed to the server in some way via lore or code or who are otherwise mentioned in articles or w/e, later being discovered as "problematic" in some capacity being pretty overly-defensive, inconsistent with current Aurora policy, etc etc. On the topic of memorials and medals and such though- I played Aurelien Levasseur, who died in the warehouse assault event on Konyang. Frankly, I think it sucks; he was in the middle of an arc, involved with many other characters, still had tons of roleplay potential, and was my longest-running character on Aurora. Obviously I queued up with him for a high-intensity event, which means that I knew that there was some chance of something happening to him, and that's fine- if I make a mistake with him or play him in a way that means he gets severely injured or killed, that's okay! However, to be entirely honest, I was not at all happy with his death. I think the circumstances of it should've led to a retcon, but it didn't. Even then, if he died without retcon, it at least should've served some purpose, right? Well, no actually, not at all. If it did, I would be far less annoyed about it. I think it's entirely accurate to say that his death was completely meaningless and pointless- it served zero purpose in the event or elsewhere. I played the round safely as command support for the entire duration until the end, when suddenly he was damn near immediately decapped while alone with zero chance for survival- there was literally nothing I could do about it. He didn't die because I misplayed, he died because I was following orders from command and an admin-controlled IPC + horde of infected spawned in the same direction he was heading. I had absolutely no agency here, not a single action I could have taken would've saved him. This leads me into the memorial / medals / awards discussion. At the very least, after my singular established character died an entirely meaningless death and was denied a retcon, I'd think he could be mentioned canonically in some way. If we're going to be taking the approach of "dying in events is irreversible, regardless of the circumstances" we should at least make sure that the deaths aren't completely meaningless, because let's be real- the roleplay that comes from this sort of thing (someone dying without their death serving a purpose) is minimal. Most people completely forget about it after a few weeks at most.

I think this sounds like a pretty neat idea, personally! Sure there are some potential negatives to do with maintaining the memorial, but I think some people are worrying too much about things like "alienation" and "server culture." I really don't think people who are new to the server are going to see a memorial and be alienated by that of all things. They're already hopping into a universe with a long history, tons of lore, and plenty of both new and established characters (some of which have literally been around for years), I doubt a list of canonically dead characters is going to be the thing that breaks them. I also don't think most people are going to be purposefully killing off characters just to get their "characters named on the memorial" number up. Additionally, memorials are not a military-only thing; it's not unlikely that people aboard the ship would want to push to make one either, given that these are people they care about, so like Evandorf said, even if you wanted it to not be a corporate initiative, there's an easy way to solve that. Also, we already have canon announcements from the SCC listing the names of the dead, so it's not exactly like it's unfitting. If maintaining the list is too problematic because of the scope of it, then you could even narrow it down to only be event deaths. That would be significantly easier to maintain, make the list far shorter, and offers much less risk of people making characters just to die on them. Honestly, unless this would be something that is excessively difficult/annoying to maintain (I can't imagine it would be, but idk) I don't see much reason not to add it. It offers a new location for people to RP at, and while the RP offered by it may not be upbeat, why does it have to be? More ways to get RP is always a good thing. People can choose to engage in the depressing RP or not. Just like everything else, it's not being forced upon them.

Honestly, I'm surprised Shimmer doesn't already have a Command whitelist. Interacting with her both ICly and OOCly is always a very fun and pleasant experience, and interacting with her characters- particularly on the bridge- really shows that she understands what to do, and how to do it in a fun and engaging manner. On the occasion that her character is given some form of leadership or pseudo-leadership, I've found that she does a very good job of managing it in a way that I think would be perfect for a Command member. She puts a lot of effort into her characters and RP, and I think she does her best to give as many people as she can some sort of opportunity to interact with whatever is happening, without sacrificing RP quality. I think this is a very important thing to see in a Command player, and I think her question responses emphasize my point: she clearly knows the role of a Command character in dealing with all different types of players and situations. Additionally, she can be trusted ICly and OOCly to follow through on using that knowledge to actively improve the rounds in which she is present, something which I believe to be an important distinction from only knowing what should be done. Like Silvie said, I think there's absolutely no reason to not give her a trial at the very least, and I'm confident enough in her IC and OOC conduct to say that I think she can easily pass the trial. +1

BYOND Ckey: CriticalDuck Discord username: imperial_duck Character names: Aurelien Levasseur Species you are applying to play: IPC ------------------------------ General Whitelist Requirements Have you read the lore pages for the species you wish to be whitelisted for? 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 species? Exploring new angles to interact with people is fun, and IPCs provide a lot of different opportunities due to how diverse and versatile they are. Additionally, as a long-time Dominia main, I've been interested in the idea of playing a synthetic character for a while now. I've mostly played Humans during my time on Aurora, and the diverse array of options for Humans- even within a singular faction- has been enough to provide me with many different opportunities for characters who play very differently from one another. On the other hand, playing a completely different species, like Vaurcae, provided me with a completely different experience from anything that was possible to have with a Human character. What makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a human? The amount by which roleplaying an IPC differs from roleplaying a human largely depends on the specific IPC itself, due to the fact that IPCs are so diverse. Where an IPC was manufactured, what it was created for, how it was developed and by whom, whether it's free or owned, and various other factors can all affect how an IPC is roleplayed. Aside from those, however, there are common factors amongst all IPCs which will differ their roleplay from that of Humans; their synthetic nature and the fact that they are- in the eyes of the majority of the spur- nothing more than tools at best means that the way that IPCs see themselves, and how other crew see them, can have wildly different effects on their roleplay. Some people may interact with them as people, others may interact with them as machines, and other still may interact with them as if their existence offends them personally. ------------------------------ Character Application Character Name: Z.I. Edith Write a backstory for your character. This may include their origin, education, personality and how they arrived to the SCCV Horizon. Z.I. Edith is a standard Baseline model IPC created in 2464 by Confiance Technologies on Luna. Originally created to be an Engineering unit operating in local space for the company, Edith was initially installed only with basic functionalities, a basic engineering skillset, and the ability to understand Solarian Common. It was then grouped with a number of other newly-created synthetics in order to gain more engineering knowledge through hands-on field experience. Eventually, after a couple of weeks, Edith was removed from the learning group and sent to work in a nearby station orbiting Luna, where it continued its work. While Edith did manage to learn quite a bit about its work during this time, both from its own experience and from watching other synthetic workers, it still lacked any real experience interacting with others, and especially with non-synthetics. Due to this, what brief interactions it did have with other synthetic workers- whether obligatory or not- typically ended up being cut short by its own incompetence and lack of social experience. This, combined with the nature by which Human employees tended to treat Edith- which was primarily as though it didn't exist for anything other than their own convenience- worked to shape its worries regarding how its handler might see it; after all, an unwanted synthetic is certain to be dismantled. Its worries would be unfounded at this point, however, as- much to Edith's surprise- its handler had been sufficiently happy enough with its performance aboard the station and capacity to develop that it was suggested that Edith would next be sent to Biesel, where it would undergo some maintenance before being sent to work aboard the SCCV Horizon. This, of course, had the additional effect of making Edith's handler quite happy due to the additional benefits that could come with having a more useful synthetic working for them. Edith, seeing its handler's reaction to its success, suddenly found itself feeling rewarded for its efforts- its year-and-some of work had been recognized and praised to some extent, which meant that it would soon be receiving additional information for its operation in Biesel and the Horizon, and it was currently safe from being wiped, or worse- dismantled. Soon, its work would begin aboard the SCCV Horizon- the flagship of the SCC. It liked this feeling- one of the first positive emotions it had experienced naturally. Soon, Edith thought, it would have even more chances to improve its image in the eyes of its handler and Zavodskoi, which would result in positive notes from its handler, and- eventually- could potentially result in more benefits for itself. How has the recent events of the Orion Spur impacted your character? Events such as the Phoron Scarcity, the Solarian Collapse or even the Invasions of Biesel for interstellar-wide affairs, while region-specific events such as the Peacekeeper Mandate, The Titan Rises or even Cold Dawn may impact your character. The recent events with the Konyang arc would likely have the most effect on Edith of the more recent events in the Spur, due to the fact that Edith is, of course, a synthetic. While Edith wasn't around on the Horizon or Konyang for the events leading up to this point, due to the nature of the virus, I think it's safe to say that any synthetic that knows about it would be affected in some capacity. Edith- despite its distance from the events up until this point- is, of course, set to be sent to the Horizon, and thus would likely be told about the virus at minimum by its handler. This would likely result in a mixture of fear in addition to the positive emotions that Edith had experienced previously, which would likely be the first real negative emotions that Edith had experienced naturally. Given its lack of social development, this would be a big step for it in both how they may interact with other synthetics while in the vicinity of the planet- particularly as Edith's knowledge of the virus is likely rather minimal- as Edith may be more afraid of the virus being transmitted to it, and additionally its experience with fear would be a step in developing its emotional capacity. How does your character view the megacorporation they work for? Edith would likely view Zavodskoi Interstellar in a fairly complex way. It likely would view the corporation in a rather complex manner; given that Zavodskoi created Edith in the first place, Edith would likely be grateful to the corporation for its existence, while simultaneously viewing it with the utmost respect, awe, and fear, as it would greatly wish to please both its handler and the company- not necessarily directly for the benefit of either of them, but because those entities benefitting from its work does, by extension, result in benefits for Edith. It would likely believe that, as Zavodskoi created it and also holds the power to destroy it, that it is far beneath the company, and thus has to work as hard as it can to prove itself useful so that it may be allowed to continue existing without memory wipes.

Personally, I really don't like cyborgification. I think it's both unfun as a mechanic and too grimderp as a concept, so having literally anything as an alternative/replacement for that is something I would really like to see. Currently, cyborgification is basically the only real form of high-level punishment that's both legal and sees any use, and a lot of the time even when it's not performed on ship (another thing I think is extremely weird and not fitting at all) and the person is HUT, they're either implied or outright stated to be waiting for cyborgification. Having alternatives to that which also would allow for further RP from/with the antag in question seems purely beneficial to me, especially as that allows for a different form of RP than what you see when someone's waiting to be cyborgified. Maybe that doesn't necessarily take the form of some sort of pacification device specifically as suggested, but I think that it's at the very least a good place to start.

Personally, I think removing sensors entirely would serve best for improving gameplay all around. IMO some non-exhaustive benefits are as follows: 1. It helps to make the general medical player experience better. I've not played a ton of medical myself, admittedly, but I have before- and I know what sitting there staring at sensors is like. It's not fun, and I believe that as long as sensors are in the game, medical players will not only be expected to have sensors visible on their screens at all times in some form or another, but will also be actively disparaged for not. This is, as some people have mentioned, an issue that extends beyond just suit sensors, but it's good to start somewhere. 2. It gives antags far more leeway with how they choose to approach certain situations. I've seen a number of people talk about how removing suit sensors will lead to people laying on the floor bleeding out for X minutes without being able to be found, but- alternatively- I think the removal of suit sensors could potentially serve to encourage antags to not kill people, as it suddenly becomes far less necessary to do so with the removal of sensors. This does, of course, depend on the antag player, but it's objectively true that sensors encourage antags to quickly kill people and get out, so it's not unreasonable to say that removing them could allow antags more freedom to not kill people, or at least not immediately. 3. People dying is fine. I think the expectation that you won't die is, in my opinion, something that shouldn't be encouraged. I do think there's a bit of a balance to be struck, as dying too often or too early into a round can certainly be frustrating for some people, especially as rounds last two hours, however on the other hand medical is already so incredibly strong that it's almost trivial to bring people back from basically death's door. Being able to actively track everyone's medical status and location on top of that makes it absurdly difficult to die without antags outright murdering you on the spot. It's already hard enough to die, and I really don't think more people dying is a bad thing, both from an IC perspective and an OOC perspective. IC, death obviously lead to far more consequences than injury, and can shift the flow of a round depending on who died and everything surrounding the death. It also doesn't necessitate more grief RP, for those who are disinclined towards that. OOCly, it encourages people to be more careful with their characters and not charge into danger (which yes, they typically shouldn't be doing anyways, but people do and will continue to do so. This doesn't solve that issue whatsoever, but it does discourage it in more situations).

I get your point, but I'm not interested in bringing up my reasons for disliking using the main discord, publicly or privately to staff- it's not something for them to solve, it's purely a personal thing. The point was that myself and other people have reasons why we prefer to use the relay over the main discord, and it's not because of this ridiculous idea that all of us have some sense of 'superiority' because we use a different discord. Normally, I would say maybe some people do- but I really fucking doubt it. The claim is stupid as hell, and I think the people making claims like that seriously need to rethink what they're saying. Overall, I don't really care too much either way. I don't need the relay to be around and I understand that there are likely a number of positives to merging from the perspective of staff. However, I do prefer being able to comfortably interact with the community OOCly, and that's what the relay offers to me. It's simply more comfortable. This is, of course, largely irrelevant to the community as a whole, so I don't expect it to mean anything. I don't believe my opinions to hold more weight than other people's within the community. My goal was more-or-less just speaking out against that frankly delusional claim as well as trying to explain that there are, in fact, actual reasons why some people prefer to interact with the relay and not the main discord. These reasons differ from person to person, so I can't exactly expand upon them. This may seem obvious and not worth pointing out, but again- considering what some people are saying, I think it is. This is an absolutely terrible idea, and a fantastic way to completely kill the community. A lot of us interact with each other via the discords OOCly, and completely separate from anything about the game. As a matter of fact, I'd argue the majority of OOC discussion in the relay is completely unrelated to the game. A lot of us aren't interested in talking about the game and only the game with each other, and a lot of us want to interact with each other outside of the game. A lot of us have also made friends within the community through OOC interactions- because how the fuck are you going to make friends with people OOCly through nothing but IC interactions? Sometimes problematic metacliques pop up, but it's infrequent and usually quickly dissipates. More often than not, these 'cliques' are just friend groups. Even if your only interest is in the server itself and RP, I doubt the server would survive this- and if it somehow managed to, it would lose a significant portion of its population.

For me, it's personal stuff that's largely irrelevant to the topic, really. I don't think the reasons are important, just the fact that myself and others have reasons why we would prefer to avoid talking in the maincord- whether it's seen as petty or not. I will also add that I don't mean to imply that merging the discords will cause significant issues or anything- like I said, I don't think much of anything will change one way or another- only that I don't see any real positives aside from perhaps ease of moderation (although even then, modmail exists), while having enough potential downsides that I don't believe the merge to be worth doing.

I entirely disagree with this idea, merging the discords sounds pretty horrible. If myself and other people who talk in the relay OOC wanted to talk in the maincord, then we would just talk there- and yet we don't, and I'm pretty sure most of us have our reasons for not doing so. For whatever reasons they might have, some people who have posted in this thread seem to believe that merging the discords will, somehow, lead to a reduction in (perceived) toxicity or a change in how the relay or overall community interacts with each other. I don't see why this would possibly be the case- if you dislike the general attitude of the relay OOC, then you can simply use the maincord instead. Why would you want to merge them when all that would do is bring the people whose attitudes you dislike into the maincord? If you don't like interacting with the relay OOC community, how would bringing them into the maincord possibly improve things and not just lead to more conflict? I have also seen some people here who are complaining about the toxicity of the relay go into the relay themselves and be toxic towards certain relay users for being people who wish to keep the relay separate by- for example- referring to them as 'elitist', which is extremely hypocritical given the nature of the argument here, and only further leads me to believe that merging the discords would cause issues. I see references to the 'elitist' behaviour of relay OOC users "looking down on maincord users", while these people do the exact same thing towards relay users. It's not a server problem, it's a people problem. Ironically, I think this discussion has possibly brought some of the most toxic conversation as of recent into the relay when it was otherwise entirely fine. Additionally, as some people have pointed out, the discords have largely separate communities, and thus- reasonably- largely separate OOC 'cultures' or whatever you want to call it, which is to say the way that people in the maincord OOC interact with each other is very often different from the way that relay OOC users interact with each other; whether that's perceived as negative or positive depends on who you ask. Is the relay discord a perfect nice place where people always behave? No, of course not, but merging the discords isn't going to somehow make that better, and I completely fail to understand how people seem to believe it would. Overall, I just don't see what the point is. Nobody is locked into the maincord or the relay or the lore discord or whatever- they're all public discords that are easy to find links to via the maincord. If people want to interact with the community OOCly, they can do so on whichever discord they want to. Yet, the people here who complained about being unable to interact with the community OOCly because of the existence of the relay refuse to use the relay discord because of its community. So... why would you suddenly want to interact with them in the maincord? Honestly, I don't think this is actually all that important. I don't think much of anything will change either way. However, I'm writing a lot about this because I, myself, very explicitly do not talk in the maincord for personal reasons (and no, it's not because I think I'm better than maincord users. fucking ridiculous thing to insinuate), but I do generally enjoy using the relay OOC, and I think the community- while occasionally frustrating, as with any community- is more often than not nice to interact with.

I think the PR is a very good idea, both because of it mechanically requiring players to age-up their characters and out of learner roles- thus making them unable to hold the position hostage with that character- and also, I think it helps push towards getting rid of teenager characters. I think the minimum age for characters in general should be raised as well, as I really don't think characters being playable that young adds anything positive.

Absolutely thrilled to give my +1 approval for Geeves' Skrell Deputy Application! 🔥 With the promise of "I'll make them hot again," I have no doubt that Geeves has the passion, dedication, and skills to excel in this role. Let's bring that energy and heat back into action! Good luck, Geeves! 💪🔥 #GeevesForDeputy #BurningBright