Aphelion

So far, been a wholesome chief who is competent, approachable, and a genuinely effective manager. 10/10

minefield that was layed and never removed.

Golden Deep so far uses it's mysteriousness as a bit of a crutch. Cut-throat capitalist robots is a cool faction, but as sniblet says, the source of their success is unfounded, and their relationship is not expanded. I think for where they get their influence, their world could function as a central banking/tax haven, if it were moved a little further into the coalition, while still being an independant party, they could become something like the Sweden of the coalition while still having cut-throat capitalist ideals. They invite companies and people to bank with them, help secure assets, stay neutral, and always profit. Alternatively (or perhaps additionally) they could have an insanely fast version of a stock market. A Golden Deep IPC's company one day could be up 1000%, (and the next day they could be getting liquidated by another company), leading to interest from outside investment, under the premise that fast money can be made in the Golden Deep's companies.

BYOND Ckey: 1062 Aphelion Discord username: Peps2023/ "Asio Agent" on the Aurora Server Discord. Character names: Kaori Kari, Sato Josuke, Ketchzi Guwan are currently what I rotate most. Also occasionally Laurette Duoit Species you are applying to play: Vaurca ------------------------------ General Whitelist Requirements What colour do you plan on making your first alien character?: #83290B This sort of Reddish Brownish Darkish color. 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?: They are a species that are unique to Aurora and show the ability of this server's adequate depth in lore. Despite being fundamentally alien to any traditional concept we'd have in nearly every way, they have motivations, philosophies, history, and culture, combined with the need to place themselves within Human, Unathi and Skrell civilization for their own survival. They are desperate strangers in a strange land, where every day they are met with alienation, but must persevere in order to survive. What makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a human?: Vaurcae are made for a purpose, even before hatching, through Imagotis and exposure to various chemical processes, their life is planned out for them. Additionally they are a Eusocial species, unlike Humans they are born from a specific caste, and the vast majority of them are never made to reproduce, but rather benefit the Hive, and the Queen. Vaurca are also either 'Viax' or 'Akaix', meaning they are either nearly brain dead and totally subservient, or more independant while still working however they can for the queen. They're really nothing like humans, except for in a few more recent cultural phenomena that have come about from attempts to integrate with human society, but even those are full of strange realities from their unique perspective. ------------------------------ Character Application Character Name: Ka'Akaix'Telk Zo'ra. Write a backstory for your character. This may include their origin, education, personality and how they arrived to the SCCV Horizon. (2 paragraphs minimum) Laid from Ta'Akaix'Athvur'Zezkt'azi Zora, in the year 2460 and grown in Phoenixport, Ka'Akaix'Telk Zora was programmed from the beginning with the strange new concepts that were common among humans, chiefly known as 'Journalism'. The idea of cataloguing information, and representing it in a way that maximizes appeal, while being informative and providing a convincing narrative to change the perspectives of others. Telk, and serveral others of it's brood were built for Journalism, and given the very strong concept, that the best way to help their queen and hive is to convince Humans that the Vaurca are good, kind, relatable, and in general very nice creatures who may just be having a bad day. Starting out it's career, Telk initially created countless scrappy independant journalistic videos and articles, documenting life as a Vaurca, showing how Vaurca lived, and what it was like, and uploading them to the Extranet. Eventually it began making some more authentic style journalism, it's 2462 video 'Buying Milk in Phoenixport' was a particularly moving film that gained some popularity. The film consisted of Telk, and two bound assistants going to the shopping mall in Phoenixport to buy milk. In it, there were various interactions with humans in this process, where looks of discomfort can be seen as many humans either stare or try not to stare, and say rather hurtful things. The timing of this video led to some criticism of how Einstein Engines enabled it's workers to be biased against Vaurca, and caught the eye of Nanotrasen. From 2462, to 2464 Telk would leave Phoenixport, and move to more around Mendel for it's videos. Gaining a nanotrasen sponsorship that led to it featuring NT products and propaganda on it's videos. Over these years it would become more biased to Nanotrasen documenting the worsening relationship between NT and EE, the press of the Solarian fleet into Biesel space, the formation of the SCC, the worsening phoron crises and it's affect on the terrified Vaurca population, and countless unboxings of Nanotrasen products marketed towards Akaix Zo'ra Vaurca. It did a twenty five hour live-stream about the SCCV Horizon, and how Chainlink with nanotrasen at the helm is the best hope for Biesel featuring exclusive interviews with various notable Zo'ra breeders, human engineers who helped design the Horizon, and a skrell scientist who was rumored to soon begin working there (though never actually did). Although there is some contention about Telk being a sellout in some circles of it's human fans, it maintained a large amount of interest from them, fans that it carried over when it was ultimately hired by Nanotrasen to work as a full time corporate journalist in their 'Ship Life' series. Telk and many other journalists would board with various Nanotrasen and SCC ships, documenting the luxuries of being an Astronaut aboard one of their vessels and the joys of exploration. As Telk continued to grow as an artist, it became apparent that one of the best ways to ensure value for it's Queen was to further improve the relationship between Zo'ra and Nanotrasen. The benefits of this increased public recognition from the corporation are undeniable, large portions of it's generous pay going directly to supporting it's hive and Queen, but also improving the way Nanotrasen interacts with other Vaurca. Eventually Telk would be hired to work aboard the SCCV Horizon as a journalist here to document the SCC's flagship and the single greatest mission ever led by Nanotrasen. How has the recent events of the Orion Spur impacted your character? Event 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. (1 paragraph minimum) On the invasion of Biesel It reported on the invasion of Biesel. Due to being a worker, it did not help the TCFL, although there was a brief period in it's career where it helped promote working with the TCFL, interviewing several trainees. On the Phoron shortage Hell yeah, it's scared shitless of phoron running out. That would mean an end to it's queen and hive. It keeps tabs on how everyone is running out, but genuinely believes that the best and only course of action is working through the SCC to ensure a greater supply of phoron for everyone. On the Corporate Reconstruction Zone/ Peacekeeper Mandate During the Peacekeeper mandates, Telk created several reports with SCC and TCFL forces, showing how the people working for change in the reconstruction zone were simply trying to build a better galaxy. It refused to report on the warcrimes that took place, instead only focusing on how the Biesel government was improving On the potential of a Vaurca Queen being in the Biesel Elections It's rather open contract with Nanotrasen has let it also provide commentary on free subjects, in the bi-weekly 'free format' video series known as Telk Talks. Recently Telk had an interview with the notable Zo'ra breeder Ta'Akaix'Kroozich Zo'ra, and a human xenoflourist who had been working in Avthur's hive. The video was discussing the prospect of Vaurca Queens obtaining political power, particularly focusing on how nice it is for humans to live in Vaurca hives, in spite of risks that present themselves. On the recent Virus spreading among Synthetics In another 'Telk Talk' it discussed the virus with a bound Vaurca and an IPC. The episode was not one of the best. It is naturally concerned at what the virus will do to synthetics, knowing that if it became wide spread on biesel it would hurt the Zo'ra hive and damage overall synergy between species in Biesel. How does your character view the megacorporation they work for? (1 paragraph minimum) Loves Nanotrasen, thinks that it's the best corporation. It isn't quite a fan of other corporations, and is encouraged by it's associates in Nanotrasen's media core to focus on how NT is helping people, more than any other company in the Chainlink. Ultimately it trusts Nanotrasen and believes that it has created a mutually beneficial relationship for both NT and Avthur. However it goes without saying that if supporting Nanotrasen ceased to be beneficial for the Zo'ra hive, it would become less of a fan.

I agree with this. Have an option for the surface to get people, but don't nullify bridge crew. Some of the best rounds I've had as BC has been because of the increased relevancy of the role to gameplay. Adding a thing to remove work from BC to make it easier on other players would be like just starting the game with the engine already set up. Sure it's a repetitive task, but it's an enjoyable part of the job. The current gameplay loop for BC outside of this ferrying service is a paperwork simulator, and then the rare case of being required for ship to ship combat. The Ferrying is not repetitive, and you people who are whining should honestly just make a BC instead of trying to manufacture a game where BC are irrelevant again. Or we should like, add automated doctors to heal people that are always present, maybe a security drone wandering the halls to catch baddies when there is no sec. Surely catching the baddie as sec is getting repetitive at this point, yeah? TLDR: It's nice actually being involved in the gameplay... Edit: I regret how heated I got in a bit of this, but it's frustrating to be having a good time, and finally being relevant as a role, and then immediately seeing a band of people wanting to make it less important to gameplay.

So with me, there's a few things in the Up-burger that were problematic. We need a condimaster to make sauce, and extact the fluids properly. Just having a shit-load of onions and potatos somewhere would also be nice. More meat would also be ideal.

Making a thread for this, since I assume I'm not the only person who had some issues. I understand the map is temporary, so I'm happy to accept it as it is. But to log a few minor issues that make the round difficult for people spawning there might be good.

Hello i am decided. Gloopy is right, it would be more fun if players could also join as infected. This would need more moderation, and joining as infected and trying to pull a 'im a good guy really' would be a nono imo, but it would be very fun to make the surface of the konyang wilderness a kind of 'pvp zone' where RP and more violent actions happen within reason. It's been a driving aspect in the fun we've had on Konyang so far, with the pirate groups players can sometimes join as down there.

Basic improvements to make Hydroponics, and the gardener role a little less annoying: A public access welding fuel tank, literally anywhere on the ship. This is because the bee smoker needs welding fuel to function. Access to the freezer (Not the kitchen, but the freezer) because the gardener also makes meat, lard, and other perishables that should be refridgerated. (also they won't fit into the smartfridge) These fucking light bars that stand right over the hydroponics trays need to be moved, or something. Even replacing them with a lightbulb would be preferable to being gormless to how the plants are (see image) .

yes

This is a big suggestion, I know. Though if the civilian station also had an Indra, or some kind of fun engine to experiment with, it might at least attract the learning engineer crowd, who want to try stuff, but don't want to blow up the Horizon.

On basically every shift, the off-map rotation brings up the 'civilian station' which is a 100% RP driven station that can run independantly from the rest of the game. It is a very very cool concept, but it is not very well executed because of a handful of things. 1. There does not seem to be any sensor console. So you're basically blind until someone else finds the station. 2. Everything the civilian station can sell is strictly RP based materials. This would be cool, if we could be found. But having some stuff that is mechanically useful would incite people to actually want to interact with the station. - Edit: I found a warehouse with lots of random-spawn crates, which at least solves this problem. 3. They have no away shuttle of any kind. You're basically just stuck on the station, and without even seeing anything around you, 4. Nobody bothers contacting the civilian station, because it's normally empty. Because of all these reasons, the concept falls a little flat. It could be a fair bit cooler if the civilian station had some functional significance that made it interesting, but for now you're blind, and alone, and clueless, and the station basically is treated as 'not worth visiting' by anyone. Like I said, I really like the concept, but in it's current state, there are precious few situations where playing it is actually fun, unless you like wandering cluelessly. It's bad enough that I would honestly ask for it to be removed from the rotation, if it can't be made interesting, since the concept for having an actual civilian presence on the map is really cool, but in it's current state, unless you are ghosting and see someone boarding, or manage to rally a group of people to play on it, it doesn't provide any improvement to the game.

Normal wrapping paper would be nice. I have a gimick I play in cargo where I wrap and label everything I send for a bounty, and I sometimes run out because of this. Right now, the only wrapping paper you can order is the gift wrapping paper. I want the nice brown wrapping paper.

These ideas on fundamentally changing antags because people want a mini event are bad. New players won't want to antag at all then, and the reason to try it would be fucked up. Antag rounds are boring because antags can never actually win. People are painfully aware OOCly and ICly at how stacked things are against the antagonist and fail to fear RP because of this I swear. When is the last antag round when a full sec team lost? Or a full sec team stood by for a gimick that wasn't neceserily demanding murder? Making the round interesting =/= letting Horizon win every time. WTF is the threat? An enemy ship? Well Horizon has Shields, and three guns, one of which can obliterate things hard. Literally every ship we have in rotation cannot counter it. A traitor? Ok. Good luck with 10 v 1. Also because it's autotraitor, you're sharing, and they're all already sick of you. Ling, Vamp, interesting concepts. All the gimicks are played out for people who main departments that have anything to do with these roles though. Also still got things stacked against you so you pose no actual threat (until you do) Cult, and Rev all fit into things that would be interesting and function for 'mini events', if the round types weren't already played out hard by the people who play this game all the time. They also always usually lose, though sometimes if we're lucky an ERT is at least called. For antags to be at all appealing, I really think we need to give them a win or something. 'making the round interesting' is way too vague, and it will never be actually interesting if people don't actually feel threatened. This server is crap for action, I think in an effort to encourage more RP based gimicks. But Action is all it actually has, any RP gimick built around lore will make half the server totally gormless to what is going on. Hell most of sec don't even know what factions make up the PMCG, and you want them to know lore? I get the design philosophy of building towards a server that leads players into following the rules, and I think that is what has lead to this situation, but that's also just fucking weird given the server has 24/7 moderation. Like we're doing both and it leads to traitors who softball sec (for fear of admin intervention), and get fucked in reply, because sec is built for the situation where an antag is griefing and not running for plot, for some reason. I really think that if we really want to have fun, we need to be prepared to actually have a risk and maybe get griefed here and there. It happens, deal with it. For what it's worth, I'm biased. I am so, so sick if playing antag, and trying very hard not to not just fucking kill people and to RP, just for command or sec or whatever department to conclude that I need to be removed from the round. But surely it can't be fun for sec either? Round after round of "oh the antag is here, time for code blue, let's get lethals and armor, and just steamroll this". Tho that's not what I see, it's usually 'deals with it quick, maybe one officer goes to med, then they all give eachother high-fives'

Maybe give PunPun actually interesting mechanics then. Like let her hold drinks, maybe even have a way to show her how to mix a specific drink and just have her continue to make it, if that would be possible. (sounds like it would be difficult to program but could be fun). Maybe if you give her a bucket, and put her in a hydroponics room, she will run around with the bucket and water plants. Another option... handing her the shotgun, and letting the bartender command her to shoot people. though that's more silly. Monkey in space is cool, imo. Pun Pun is fun, tho if we could actually make the pets a bit more interesting I'd be all for that. Even just personality would be nice, like give PunPun, Ian, Ginny, and what not a favourite food, and tricks and stuff.

You may be right about the standing in the halls 'in peaceful times', but lots of the time I've seen otherwise. On needing Ops to be manned, I feel like it would if Ops had a reason to exist they'd actually have people wanting to play it. Right now joining as Ops is like, you're busy, but also meaningless, it isn't that great. That being said, this problem could also be solved by giving the warden access to Ops to access the armory. Also, when sec can't get their weapons, they can improvise, or maybe even lose. The near instant ability to acquire a counter to whatever the round throws sec is just not fun.

This could actually be really fun. We could even do a similar thing to ERT teams, or something, where depending on the sector and RNG, Ops can get good deals on specific special weapons. Encouraging experimentation and stuff. I'd kind of like this, and the Armory being set up in Ops, instead of sec, since then the Warden/Ops could run a bit of a game on securing equipment.

Title nearly sounds like a joke. But it's not, hear me out. Sec as it stands is still way too insular. Their interaction with other crew is at best, in the bar getting smashed, or getting treated by medical. Whenever they need to step up their game, they can do it all internally, and the sec side of the ship as a whole basically reinforces this isolation. If the armory was somehow moved to the opposite side of the ship, and then Ops and the warden were both entrusted with keeping the logistics of the weapons/armor tracked, it would be sensible. Ops is meant to be handling the ship's cargo anyway, and this more in depth engagement with ops could give the warden an excuse to not just live in the brig. I don't think in this situation operations would necessarily get access to the armory at any point, but it would be more of a 'hey how you do' type of thing, that more or less necessitates the departments to at least acknowledge eachother, and gives ops something to do in the event of characters not having any IC reason to want to leave their department. Currently, I think that the armory's placement also just makes the gameplay a bit too fast for HRP. The response time to a threat, when there is a warden on is insanely fast. Security can get armed and armored up in under a minute. At least needing to run to another department, to get the weapons, to get the antags, would make it more interesting and give antags a little more breathing room if they're doing something cool.

I firmly disagree with you on them being 'just ugly' the screen is awesome. Also baselines are the most common body type outside of the shell frame. I think making robots look like robots is good, I prefer them over the tube frames immensely. Make another cheap option, use unbranded, yeah. Tho personally I always thought Unbranded looked waay uglier.

Shrink sec, imo. A ten person department is just too big. The crew armory is only ever useful right now on lowpop, and it never gets accessed on lowpop because lowpop heads are sparse. It won't solve the wider issue of fear at taking things too far that I face, and lots of antags face, but it would at least make it more meaningful to kill a sec officer or two. Right now if you kill or disable 2, the department is down by 20% on highpop. The only situation where a crew armory is useful is if the antags get murderboney hard and get banned halfway through the round. At least that's what it feels like. Like the game is clunky enough, and sec gets an inherit advantage already, but ontop that winning is just not a thing that will ever happen. I get we're an RP server, antags shouldn't play to win but to make the round interesting, but for real sec is a curbstomping machine for any RP that isn't a goosechase around the ship. Right now to even begin to involve other departments in a violent plot, you either need to initiate it in their department, run through it, or achieve a 10-0 KD against people who play this game exclusively for combat and will ahelp you if you kill one of them. Less violent gimicks are fine, but really whenever you do them you're playing against the clock for that phat ass department of ten paramilitary soldiers to steamroll you into the brig.

Would love this. Also would love if it wasn't just universal comms access, but like, if specific frequencies just randomly included others, and not all of them at once. Moving away from making it immediately obvious to one department that they're being heard on another frequency would drive conflict and intrigue in the round imo.

This was basically one of the better rounds that week. Holy shit. I had no idea command took him straight to getting borged. WTF is wrong with people?

Also, on the hostile no-contact stations. We could do a full on 'Sentinel Island negotiation' type event, eventually. Let's say they have something that the Conglomerate wants, but the lost colony is technically part of the Scarab Fleets, and so under the supposed protection of the Coalition of Colonies. The SCC wouldn't be able to just take what they want immediately from them, but the Horizon would basically need to be a center for first contact with the long-lost scarabs, and need to establish some kind of rapport with them, and convince the Scarabs that the SCC are not Shaitan.

Lore Impact: Medium/Large Species: Offworlder Humans Short Description: Unconfirmed masses of spaceships, stations, and lineages leading to several speculated scarab ships that should exist but cannot be found, with the occasional encounters and discoveries of unnervingly huge populations that are lost between the stars. How will this be reflected on-station?: It adds another potential theory for origins of mysterious things/ antagonist gimicks. Finding an unknown station with no IFF transponder way out at the edge of the system could then potentially be a Dark Space Human station where something terrible happened, it could potentially enable more offmap roles and intrigue. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed to the loreteam?: Yes. Long Description: This is more of a logical conclusion based on missing scarab ships, and an interesting concept among offworlders that I feel like has not been explored too much here. The premise is that the space between the stars is mind bogglingly huge, and that there may be alternative ways of living that are not star-centric, that scarabs seem most likely to manage to accomplish. This phenomena of unconfirmed humans that should exist has lead to countless expeditions for several lightyears around Arusha, combing gently through the endless dirth of inter-stellar space for assumed colonies and groups to make first contact with. On Xanu there could be an entire field of study built around the history of the Scarab fleets combined with Astronomy, for the purpose of calculating and discovering these still lost ships, that in many cases are abandoned husks of ships infested with greimorians and other stranger life forms, but in others are entirely self sufficient stations or groups of stations, and open entire new opportunities for trade. Occasionally, much larger colonies are discovered between the stars. Ships having made makeshift refineries and harvested materials from rogue planets to expand beyond capacity. Sometimes a find of one Dark Space Human station will lead to the discovery of hundreds of other stations in a complicated network across lightyears of deep exo-stellar space. Many scholars believe that several of these networks conduct trade with the Golden Deep, but a sparringly few remains and strange encrypted signals have only hinted at this. In spite of potential for profit, contact with these lost colonies is usually difficult, as they have been alone long enough that stories of Shaitan have lead to an expanded disbelief, or xenophobia in many cases. There are a handful of confirmed Dark Space Human networks that have been open hostile to foreigners, to who first contact has been impossible to actually accomplish from their staunch refusal to respond on any frequency, and open hostility to approaching unknown ships. Basically, there are billions of unknown humans who live in deep space, and are not even known about. It is bordering on 'a new world' so I get if this gets thrown out, but the thing this subfaction of Scarabs could provide us with is a nearly Atlantean kind of mystery about lost offshoots of Scarabs who live in the perpetual night, and have strange technologies, customs, and information. Dark Space Humans could be a more recent discovery, and not be a playable faction as a result, but more of a recently discovered phenomena that has driven many conspiracy theorists wild with the potential for the space between the stars being teeming with civilization. It could also give the 'Scarabs going their own way'/'Scarabs should not return to planets' mentality on a few of the ships in the fleet a fairly strong argument, to what was previously certain death, many Scarabs could look to the Dark Space Humans as a potential avenue to learn more about surviving in deep deep space.

The bucket response for this is that 'antags aren't meant to have fun, they're meant to make the round funner for others' which is a little annoying, and probably the reason that lots of the time secret is voted, we proceed to roll through every possible round type before getting extended. Again it's part of the problem that leads to antags being hated, sec and command are entitled as fuck, and people who main those roles have seen basically every gimick, and refuse to let anyone cook because they're bored with it before the antag has even done anything.