Aphelion

This is so fucking true, but it's getting off topic. There's been more than one occasion where the active heads will collectively decide to just ignore a gimick if they're oocly tired of it. I had it happen to me and I just wound up standing there with my hand up my ass going "Well fuck what now" Also man this entire thread is full of so much gaslighting. Post A "People are getting borged, and not as a last resort. We have seen it happen in round" Post B "No they're not, if you're getting borged you're probably a shitty antag, you need to be subtler or something asshole" Every time I've tried being subtle as traitor, I get ignored. A few of the times I've done anything that could be percieved as potentially lethal, I have had interviews skipped and had 'attempted murder' slapped on it. Which is what many people are mentioning repeatedly as an issue that just fucking sucks.

Idea: What if we add a special implant antags can get, that is like a memory preserver/ law disrupter. To enable antags to continue the RP post borging?

You make good points about how easy it is to be 'valid hunting' for borging. That's on the heads, honestly. I feel like if anything we need stricter management of heads of staff, when it comes to borging. Because it can be interesting, and as a roboticist, the RP of being disgusted with myself as I follow commands is neat. I would prefer if it was a thing that a head pushed only if there were no other options, and from the times I've played bridge crew, it looks like they try to approach it this way. But it does happen. I once nearly got borged basically instantly, by trying to stop a borging in progress and that was bullshit. I will admit, that the experience of what seemed like a minor thing that made the round slightly more interesting getting met with the captain nearly instantly telling security I needed to be borged, while I couldn't even complain due to having handcuffs on, was very fucking frustrating. But removing borging alltogether is not the solution. Pushing the bar up for unfixable situations with prisoners who have escaped multiple times or have actually killed a few people makes sense. Also the general apathy of crew to the antics of antags being met with borging is miserable, if you complain about being borged, nearly every 'Joe Goodman' will respond on comms "WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE A CRIME YOU SOCIOPATH", like everyone is automatically actually very in favor of borging, and it's not a huge philosophical and human rights issue that is actually the source of a big conflict in Tau Ceti itself. Edit: expanding on the apathy I seriously don't understand this. It feels like most of the crew are actually anti-corporate to a degree until they get annoyed OOCly by the antag being upset on comms, at which point they proceed to insult them for it. Very LRP unless there's actually a reason for the character to believe that imo.

Firmly disagree on it not adding anything to our setting. Several factions are built around strong political and spiritual beliefs on the legality of borging. When borging happens in a round, it enables people to roleplay out the conflict that these factions invite.

This is an error on my part. I read about Si'akh discrimination, and assumed that helping Si'akh get into the city would have made him Guwan by collaborating with undesirables. However, on further reading, I see that is wrong, and that he would only become a Guwan if he were to aid Aut'akh, if any religious entity. Ketchi Ekriskor would not be a Guwan, in this circumstance, my mistake. Would it be possible for me to expand on the story, and have the merchants working in his party lie on returning to S'th? And accuse him of murder for the deaths during the raid, due to their anger at him associating and inviting Si'akh to come with the party/ leading them on a huge waste of time? If not I would be willing to concede and say he is not Guwan, but just a peasant. My bad, again. I wanted the Tarwa association for the sake of interaction with them when they dock. I would be willing to change this part of the story, after the trade caravan and it's failures, he felt like a failure and wanted to leave Moghes. In spite of his Si'akh beliefs they were not enough for him to accept his suffering at face value, and he left on a corporate shuttle, when available. I see. What if I changed it to Ketckzi? If pressed about the merchant guild, and why he left, instead of explaining the deaths of merchants in his party, or the attempt at bringing food halfway across the world, he points to the economic collapse, and tells people that "It was bound to fail" and "I got out while I still had something to leave with" in reference to his few riches remaining paying his way off-world. He does think interstellar corporations played a role in the downfall of the merchant's guild, and internally believes that a corporation is how their target for the trade ended up already having plentiful food when his party arrived, but does not run around accusing them of destroying Moghes. Under his Si'akh beliefs he thinks that it is all just dressing and circumstance for the punishment that he deserves as one of the spirits left behind after the apocalypse, and holds no major grudge against any specific company. (but maybe as an antag gimick, him finding out Hephaestus was actually, totally responsible would lead to him seeking revenge) He dislikes, and does not support the events happenning throughout the corporate reconstruction zone. If asked about it he will use it as an opportunity to prosletyze and say it confirms his beliefs that he only lives to suffer with all the other sinful souls. But during the peacekeeper mandate, he did know of quite a few Samaritans that he chose not to inform any authorities about. He sympathizes with the Samaritans, and views them in the same light that he views many faiths and unfortunate people who have their hearts in the right place. But he does not fight for either party, and widely views the actions of corporations and politicians, and other powerful entities as 'acts of god' that come about from fate, on opposed to actual decisions. He does not like the Hegemony but cares about the fate of people within it. Even though he is guwan (may not be anymore), he still has family in Izweski and though they don't share his beliefs, wants them to live well. He thinks that the outcome of the civil war was ultimately bad. If the Hegemon did lose power through it, then suffering would have been alleviated, in his mind, and during the famine he would use it to argue Not'zar's incompetence. While the famines were ongoing, he would tell people "ThisSs iss what they get. they should have eaten the meat RAW. All thiss cooking, and eggssss. They were assking for a famine". taking the situation as another chance to prosletyze, at least, in the company of those he knew would not react violently to his criticism of the Izweski. He is glad that the rationing is ending, however. Even though he knows his family are all sinners, he doesn't want them to suffer. As for the expansion of Hephaestus and ultimate cause of the end of famine, he thinks that it's proof that there are more Ski'akh underground movements within the Hegemony than people are aware of, and that the combined belief is leading to less suffering for Moghes. This is pure speculation on his part. After, he arrived late 63, just as demonstations by the peacekeeper mandates were starting. He took this as more confirmation, everyone is here to suffer for their sins. He has a work visa with Biesel, though he traveled there on a tourist visa. He is hoping to apply for citizenship as soon as he can, which is going to be in November.

BYOND Key: 1062 Aphelion Character Names: A broad mix of characters. Though to name my recent three most common: Yul Sybilla (a farmer from Vysoka who somehow wound up in space) Eva Jotunheimr (Scarab lady) and SCC.PX6 'pete' (Unwaveringly loyal robot) Species you are applying to play: Unathi What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Green. Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: 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: Who's the stinky lizzo? It's me! I'm the stinky lizzo! Though really, I like Unathi, their bombed to hell world of Moghes provides opportunity for interesting characters. I'm particularly interested in the political persecution around Si'ahk, and that whole belief structure is facinating. Post-apocalyptic religions that are built around guilt are really cool, especially when they're the result of alien ideologies that have formed as a result of interaction with humans. On top of this, I understand it's a bit of a meme, but the green janitor unathi is just a favourite stereotype that I would want to fulfil but make real based on a reasonable investment in the lore. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Unathi are a tortured race, who's spiritual beliefs and society has been harmed and moulded by foreign powers. They are torn constantly between spiritualism, conservative feudalism, piracy, and progressive sects, all built on top of layers and layers of how each of their cultures intermingle. I think it would be a fairly big stretch to try and write a human who grew up on a world cooked in nuclear fire under a hegemony, who wound up believing an illegal but totally valid conclusion of their faith, resulting in them being considered a total undesirable that would be better off dead. Maybe the closest I could get would be Martian, but it would still not be the same, because Unathi are very tough and big lizard monsters, famous for their strength and savagery that no other species really represents in the lore. Character Name: Khetchzi Guwan Please provide a short backstory for this character (Approximately two paragraphs) Khetchzi Ekriskor was hatched in Baandr in the year 2444, as the contact war was in it's prime, early life was pocked with terror and hatred for all those outside of the Itzweki clan, one of his earliest memories is being six, just after the war ended, and needing to walk with his family for three weeks, on sparse food, desperate to get to S'th out of fear of radioactive downdrift reaching Baandr over the mountains. On arriving in S'th, they found that there was still very little food, his parents both rationed for themselves to feed him and his two sisters. Nothing would be stable, but there were several brief years of what felt like stability in S'th growing up, the economy improving and attending a school of sorts before his father managed to get Khetchzi and his sisters apprenticeships. Ketchzi's apprenticeship was with the Merchant's Guild and led to more long journeys across Moghez, and even off-world once or twice, through hard work he slowly grew and learned more of the world and the terrible thing that destroyed it. Most attempts at trading outside of Izweki were extremely profitable; they could bring canned fish from the Mogrhesian Sea and trade it for rare metals and fabrics to the starving isolated colonies of the ruined wastelands. With the right protection it was always a profitable venture, and soon Ketchzi could purchase full guild membership. Ketchzi had pride, and a reasonable amount of wealth, eventually he was granted leadership over a trading party traveling deep into the wastes to crawler Hu'maz under the belief that 'the deeper you go, the better the trade'. This journey was immense, however. He and the party found themselves passing through ruins along the way, the Thas'Karum ruins, it was here that the party met preachers of the Si'ahk faith. At first, they simply believed them to be preachers, but on camping under the shelter of ruined buildings, the preachers told them of the terrible sins of the old world, and how the nuclear fire that enveloped Moghes was the final judgment by Sk'Akh for all the evil, and that they must all beg forgiveness. Offended by them and their antics Ketchzi told them they were crazy, and forced his party to get them to leave. Things on the journey worsened after that, Ketchzi's party was raided by Gawgaryn, and lost three members, they found themselves getting flat tires, engine failures, and leaks for the whole journey. On arriving at the landcrawler, to their dismay, they found themselves trading for food from it, which, for some reason, had plenty. The great test to Ketchzi's command abilities versus the difficulties of the wastes had led him to a miserable state, he just saw more ruin and famine wherever he looked and could not help but think 'why would we have done this to ourselves'. He took the defeated trading caravan back to S'th, on the way encountering the preachers again. Seeing the terrible way Moghes was in, and feeling hopeless, he listened to them, and shared water with the fire-priests, bringing them back to Izewski and learning their beliefs in depth. Soon he came to terms with the fact that the only way to really save himself and other Unathi would be to throw themselves before Sk'akh and beg for forgiveness. He made it his mission to bring the priests into Izweki. Things got worse on arriving in S'th. Party members were disappointed with Ketchzi and reported him for his failure to properly lead. What's more, bringing fire priests to S'th and helping them integrate, it outraged a few members of the guild. Rather suddenly Ketchzi found himself stripped of guild membership, and labeled as Guwan. However as he became more convinced of Si'ahk beliefs he became more sure that he didn't want the riches of trade, and in fact, was comfortable being a Guwan. But to avoid violence he came to terms with the fact, he would be safest away from Moghes, this led him to eventually stowing away on a Tarwa ship, paying them the last valuables he had to travel to Mictlan, in Vezdukh. From Vezdukh he pursued small ways of life to make as little money as could be made to get food for eating. This led him into simple custodian work for various corporations, until he eventually fell in with Nanotrasen, and the SCC as a janitor, getting transferred to the Horizon. What do you like about this character? Monk like custodian lizard man who eats raw meat out of spiritual need who is consumed by piety and is hated by his homeland for his beliefs, what's not to like? I feel like he has a reasonable amount of conflict and knowledge about the world, the crisis of faith backing his beliefs and the terrible truth of Moghez pushing him towards Si'ahk even further, and towards being alienated by his own people, is just really fun to play. He essentially just lives to beg forgiveness for the sins of his elders and mops the station. He's not a grand pirate, or a big figure who has any importance at all readlly, but more of a meek unathi who has fled into a strange place, to maintain his beliefs in peace. How would you rate your role-playing ability? 6/10 Slow typing, and occasionally I break character for a bit of fun. But most of my characters are backed by at least a solid concept that drives them to be roleplayed well, and I enjoy getting invested in RP. Notes: Sorry if I let his backstory get too long. I tried to make it briefer towards the end. I really felt that the crisis of faith and downfall to Guwan was important to his story though.

Reporting Personnel: SCC.PX6 'Pete' Job Title of Reporting Personnel: Bridge Crew Game ID: cpZ-a2b4 Personnel Involved: Bitla Lambda, Miner: Primary Offender Sebastian Richter, Security Officer: Secondary Offender/ Potential witness No witnesses other than SCC.PX6 and Sebastian Richter. Real Time: Approximately 10:30 AM GMT, 26/09/23 Location of Incident: ICV Lady Luck, and Security Lobby Nature of Incident: [ ] - Workplace Hazard [ ] - Accident/Injury [ ] - Destruction of Property [X] - Neglect of Duty [ ] - Harassment [ ] - Assault [X] - Misconduct [X] - Other _____ Grand Theft Overview of the Incident: On an expedition of the ICV Lady Luck, an abandoned casino vessel, that SCC.PX6 elected to attend with the miner Bitla Lambda, approximately 140,000 credits were found. Bitla Lambda took 40,000 credits, claiming it as 'her cut'. On attempting to report her to officer Richter on returning to the Horizon, Officer Richter claimed that the theft of 40,000 credits was completely legal, before noting that it was 'way above his paygrade' to decide on. Submitted Evidence: No evidence was acquired beyond reports made to security officer Sebastian Richter, at the time. Who claimed that Lambda's theft was completely legal. Would you like to be personally interviewed?: [] - Yes [X] - No Did you report it to a Head of Staff or a superior? If so, who? If not, why?: No. No head of staff were present at the time. Actions taken: Attempt at reporting to security, resulted in being told that the theft of 40,000 credits was legal, and that deciding if it wasn't was 'above the officer's paygrade'. Additional Notes: No Additional Notes. Edit: Fixing facts to be more factual, and adding actual time details. Another Edit: I am probably not up to scheduling a personal interview.

Hello everyone this is Eva. From the Jotunheimr. Not sure if there is already a group for this. But these stories are kind of rare, and sometimes I have a hard time remembering fully, so I thought it would be fun to write them down, and also see what stories are like on other ships. I've heard a few and they're all very cool. This story is a Tujmansaal story. Sort of, but it's at the start of the early times where things got pretty grim. It starts sad but gets good. It's about a magical Hahkma, who fed the whole ship In most tellings of this this story, the year is around 2300. But usually on the Jotunheimr we'd just say in 'the early lonely times'. Sven woke up one day with his family, after grabbing his wrench from a closet he and his family spent hours pouring through box after box in the ship's great big cargo hold, they found guns, and knives, and wrenches, and tools, and fuel, but no food. So Sven and his family agreed to not eat that morning. After giving up on finding food Sven went to the navigation console to see the planet scans, and if he could find a home to live on. To his dismay, the console told him all the planets were bad, so he did not decide to land anywhere that day. The console also was reporting an unknown insectoid life-form aboard the ship, because of this Sven was scared. His family had just found out about Greimorians and having more of them would have been bad. So he grabbed his knife, and spacewalked to the nearest airlock to the life-form, while his mother Sanna, and sister, Ama went through the halls towards it so they could surround it. When Sven opened the airlock, he was early, and he slid the door open to see a hissing dark Greimorian. At first he drew his knife, and prepared to fight it, but soon he noticed, it was not blue, or brown, or red, or purple, or any color Greimorians come in. It was Black a dark iridescent black, he was scared and the bug ran up to him, but instead of biting him it pressed it's head into his hand and buzzed in a friendly way. Sanna and Ama came round the corner to see the bug nuzzling against Sven, but they thought it was eating him, so they shot it, but the bug's shell just let the bullets bounce off. Sven shouted "Wait, it's friendly" and soon they all realized, the bug was friendly, and brought it back to the warehouse. Ama said that she wanted to eat the bug, but both Sven and Sanna told her "No, it's no good for eating. It's all shells", so they did not eat the bug, and instead went to bed hungry, with the rest of the family. When Sven and his family woke up, things had changed! They went to the warehouse to look for food again, and they found muffin rations, and corn rations, and beef rations, and biscuits, and chicken rations, and even some rations they didn't even see on the manifest. Looking around and eating with the family, they saw the bug, headbutting crates around with it's big silly horns, pushing the food crates all together so that everyone on the ship would know where it was. All of Sven's family saw what the bug was doing, and once they had all been fed they joined it, and pushed all the food crates together, Sven and his family ended up eating well forever, the magical black bug always finding more food in their great big warehouse. This is the story my Nana Torunn told me all the time when I was seven. I became a good sorter like the Hahkma in it, and learned how to find the treasure nobody knows about in warehouses. I hope you liked it, it's more of a story for children, since really a good organized warehouse can only get you all the food you want if you can trade it. But it makes me happy to think about Sven and his family not starving any more. If any of you have Scarab stories or even fun stories from your planet worlds, I would love to hear/read them.

What if we made a LRP version of Aurora to add the clown?

Returned to the server now. Honestly I am really surprised this is actually a thing that was added.

Was antag, they killed me early in the round, when I was trying to kill them. They then apologized profusely. Honestly good stuff, shows that they respec the whole back and forth between antags and heads.

We already have a canon use of nlom sensing being used to look for creatures in Europa. It would be sensible to enable skrell who are manning a sensor console to use their nlom sense to detect if there is life on nearby tiles in space. This is a very brief suggestion. I don't think it would necessarily be overpowered, since the only function it could have is seeing if a planet or ship has players or mobs aboard it. But it would be extremely valuable in a situation where someone goes overboard.

No truer words have ever been stated

IMO, lots of people have most traitor roles disabled at this point. 'the pick of the litter' is more likely to be fellas who are desperate to be the centre of attention, and activate all the roles instead of people who genuinely want to make the round more interesting. Without some kind of incentive that isn't "You get to break the rules, and get fucked up" I don't think most people will wanna experiment with antagging. Especially new players. I honestly think lots of the problems stem from this idea. Like either people just don't wanna antag cause they don't feel robust, or don't wanna be the bad guys, or don't wanna have to 'carry' a round by being the only person actively thinking about the role properly. On a side note, being an antagonist on a round without sec often leads me to think "What would be too much in this situation" because I know that hacking into command, and doing jenky shit like giving everyone all access, or giving myself all access just isn't really that fun. I feel like there are solutions to this, but I swear allot of the time I roll antag, and there is no Sec, I feel almost too scared to do anything because I don't want to ruin anyone's time by being violent while they're 'defenceless'. I kinda also stand by the idea that Violence really sells for antags, because it's where most of the interesting mechanics lay. Even RP heavy antags should, divulge into violence in some way. The game has a fully functional atmospherics system, several alien species, most of which have unique organs that can all be damaged, removed, replaced. There are hundreds of effective weapons at your disposal, and an infinite number of scenarios where people can be hurt in interesting, funny, and insane ways. Acceleration is one thing, but most of the fun lays in using the fascinating depth of mechanics to create interesting scenarios, in my opinion.

Kinda reminds me of that one person who used to have a custom borg sprite that was a holographic catgirl. This is far more down to earth though, I dig it.

you'd think the staff would approve or deny something after a whole year, is all I meant by this.

Is this thread a joke? How've we talked about this for two months and not come to a conclusion? RP in wizard rounds is actually alright, most of the time. If you asked me the main problem with wizard is that it's such a double edged sword based on which school of magic the wizard is. Either they're nearly immortal, and can teleport, shoot fire from their fingers, or they're rather helpless, and can only summon seeds and shit. The vast majority of wizard players have the capacity to absolutely wreck shit, but half the spells are basically powergaming, and the other half are incredibly mundane. Personally I think this is the main dilemma of wizard rounds, in that the wizard can either go very balls-to-the-walls deep in violence and powers, and totally screw the station, or they can be a peaceful guy who is just kinda there for an apprentice or whatever. This sort of disparity between either getting fucked or having nothing to do makes sec mains quit, and the round as a result becomes a drag. But it really doesn't need to be. We could probably fix this disparity by making the particularly lethal spells and such unlockable by going to 'magical hotspots' on the station, where mana flows or whatever. At least by doing that people would have the promise of the round becoming more violent and interesting while actually giving the wizard a mechanical goal instead of just being there to have godlike-powers, that are only really kept in check based on the promise of OOC action if the wizard does anything that isn't fair. Addendum: Wizard right now is basically like giving some hobo a shotgun, a million dollars, and telekinetic powers, then telling him that if he takes things too far, god will remove him from space and time. Players can do TOO MUCH with the role, but also live in constant fear of doing too much.

I get that we're meant to keep it like an open door, but I think it would be nice to add some more information to go on, than is present in the wiki. I like that it's a super dense element, that somehow is in a safe zone, and cannot be reproduced, but I reckon we can add a little more to the theories of Phoron's origin. Like, one huge headcannon of mine is that Phoron is bordering on 'strange quark matter', where essentially it operates on rules a fair bit different to regular matter. The other name for Phoron, "Plasma" could also make sense, since it could be said that Phoron is basically the star plasma in a solid state, somehow still in flux, but solid. This would explain some of its transmutational qualities, that enable the production of strange new chemicals. It's essentially a safer form of nuclear fusion. Another idea I had is the difference between Phoron and Supermatter. Supermatter is, essentially Phoron 2, an even more dense type of strange quark matter, with the capacity it to radiate heat and gas, and radiation for extensively long amounts of time. This would explain its nightmarishly otherworldly properties, where it will turn you to ash instantly on touching, and also how shooting energy at it would 'activate' the matter, since the plasma shooting across its surface could initiate a break-down of the matter into lesser elements. It's just an idea that has been baking in my brain for a few months now, let me know if it's terrible and stupid. Or good enough to be an alright theory.

+7

More often than not, research makes shit for sec because they just want to see the cool shit they can make actually used for once. IDK where most players are at, but I'd honestly be absolutely over the moon if an antagonist stormed into robotics, held me at gunpoint, and told me they would kill my entire family if I didn't make a sick combat mech with a gravitational catapult for them. Same goes for R&D and freeze-rays, and gravity guns, and all that shit. Also, antags are 'logical moves come secondary to making the round more interesting'. Like it's logical to destroy the armory, it's logical to kill every security officer on sight if you intend on doing anything violent. It's logical to make it impossible for the crew to defeat you. As an antagonist, you have every IC reason to powergame in some cases. But that's not really what antagonists are here for.

Just to have people do something other than grief science as a way of interacting with the department.

It's just not that fun. People in science need a good set of circumstances around people actually working and having effective staff to be effective. Then there is only a small handful of scenarios where anything science does is needed in the round, and actually allowed. By taking the materials from the equipment, or deleting the research you're undoing a good half an hour of work from two to four people, just because of valids. I'm honestly not sure what we can do to prevent it, I know that it shouldn't be against the rules, since there are situations where science definitely does need to be griefed, but if Antags could just be more aware of the amount of work and luck that is required to make most of the cool stuff, it would be nice.

I kinda agree, but also it's hard to do that with SS13, since a huge appeal of it is the bloat in mechanics relating to violence, pain, and horrible ways to die. RP is fun, but exploiting these things is why combat is so successfully fun, usually.

Yes, but I didn't have the printout, and the CMO (after a very long shift) thought that the sprite having blue eyes was an indication of the prosthetic eyes already having been installed. It would just be easier to identify, although I know, it doesn't come up that often.

Sec is honestly, genuinely fun for most when played right. the trouble is that lots of players are in the wrong. It feels too frequent that we see sec act overtly violently if not outright sadistic for no reason other than valids. I'd rather not have sec as a department removed, but for anyone who mains cargo, service or science. I think people can agree that the majority of the rounds feel like extended with an increased chance of the parade-act that is the heroic security team and their fight for justice against the filthy antagonist entering your department for a minute or two. If people really think that other departments are fun, good for them. But there is an obvious reason why on most non-extended rounds, the only department that gets fully staffed is security. Being more involved in the event taking place on the station is just way way more fun than digging a hole, or making a nice soufflé. Despite multiple efforts to make it easier for players to get involved in a round in a meaningful way [science making shit, hydroponics growing medicine and food, cargo ordering things to help shit happen, and the bar serving as a social-gathering spot for events to initiate], nobody has any reason to be involved or tactful in an the antagonist's actions, more or less because they are meant to be afraid for their life. I think I'm rambling, cause I'm a bit of a fence sitter on this topic... But my main point is that most departments have the capacity to counter-balance antagonists. Better than security in some cases. But security is the only department that gets valids. And as a result, no other department is urged to do anything except for security, if they did it would spoil the round. My recommendation would be to increase the ability for departments to have valids. Introduce the concept of 'a crewmember's arrest' if you need to. Nothing too overboard, murdering someone should still get their character banned and all that, but just open the window for people to do stuff. Heck, have implants for some Eridani businessmen designed to suppress fear, prescribed as the result of pissing themselves at the prospect of getting fired, and use that as an excuse for people doing dumb things that have them chasing after antagonists and probably dying.