Boggle08

It is intrinsically hard to involve departments or roles such as Hangar Technician, Service, and Science roles, as these are severely lacking from a mechanical standpoint with what they're able to contribute, compared to the usual suspects. We can resolve any server culture problems with the game-mode easily, but those are informed by incentives presented through gameplay. The ship generally doesn't need dedicated logisticians. Most departments have everything they need and can throw and drag whatever crap they want brought down in a single crate. Science is science. A lot of us in science say no to expeditions simply because we're just going to stand around bored for most of it, unable to contribute in a way that other departments can't do themselves. I think it isn't a bad idea to bring a chef down for catering, especially since people are running about a lot more, but it's harder to justify something like a bartender, or, librarian. Not to say that it's impossible to involve service, but not every Odyssey round can be about inviting VIP's aboard and catering for them. We've been asking for ways to involve these departments for in-round narratives ever since I started playing five years ago. It's probably been this way long before that. What we're seeing now is just a continuation of long-standing issues that have been set aside for other projects, because of a lack of interest or direction. That being said, I think we can mitigate some of these problems through the structure of Odyssey rounds themselves. Right now, there's only one plot, an A plot, which involves everyone packing into the intrepid and leaving the ship barren. I think, especially for lower intensity canon rounds, storytellers should attempt to craft a B plot for those who remain shipside. I'm not sure how many actors story-tellers get, but they could probably feed directives to third party ships to interact with the Horizon. Or to have the Horizon and the Third party ships interact with other elements of the overmap while the Odyssey mission is underway.

Xenobiologists on Pactolus Make Surprising Discovery: Previously Unknown Species Unearthed Flora and Fauna Adaptations Suggest Rapid Evolution Post-Cataclysm By The Hierophant Writer [63 - 77%], posted 2466-12-17 from the Reach Expedition Zone. Here marks the twelfth transmission of The Sacred Echoes of a Titan's Bonded Progeny into the Voidic Rootsong Network, centring around the Pactolus Exploration League in which the discovery of unknown species has caused quite an alarm across the Consortium and Golden Deep. “In a groundbreaking development, xenobiologists stationed in the Reach Expedition Zone have uncovered an ecosystem teeming with previously unknown species, some exhibiting characteristics that suggest rapid evolutionary adaptation. This discovery, made by a joint expedition under the Pactolus Exploration League, has stunned scientists from both the Consortium of Hieroaetheria and the Golden Deep, igniting a flurry of research efforts to better understand the implications of the find.” Further listening is available here. Located within the rugged mountains west of Eurydice, the Reach Expedition Zone was initially thought to be a barren region. However, the discovery of intact ancient power facilities sparked new interest in the area. While engineers focused on restoring the dormant energy systems, xenobiologists and ecologists turned their attention to the surrounding environment—and were met with astonishing results. Xenobiologists described the discovery as “unprecedented.” The expedition unearthed a thriving ecosystem, with species of flora and fauna that had never been documented before. Early analysis suggests that many of these organisms may have evolved in response to the energy emissions from the ancient power facilities, leading to mutations that are both fascinating and perplexing. “Many of the creatures and plants we've found exhibit adaptations that don't match the known evolutionary timelines,” explained an on-site xenobiologist. “It’s as though this environment was subject to an accelerated form of natural selection, possibly triggered by the technology left behind by pre-Interstellar War civilisations.” What has particularly intrigued academic circles is the apparent link between these biological anomalies and the ancient power facilities buried deep within the mountains. Initial theories suggest that the power systems, despite being dormant for centuries, may have emitted low levels of radiation or energy that affected the surrounding environment. The xenobiology teams have already identified several mutations in the genetic makeup of local organisms that indicate a possible interaction with these energy sources. “The mutations are remarkably uniform in some species, particularly among the flora,” said Dr. Ver’lyse Qin, a xenogeneticist specializing in post-cataclysmic environments. “It’s as though these plants have been feeding off the residual energy, adapting at a rate far quicker than we would expect in a normal environment. Some have even developed bioluminescent properties, likely a response to the subterranean energy flows.” While the exact nature of these mutations remains under investigation, the Pactolus Exploration League has committed to further study. The League has deployed additional drones and sensor equipment to monitor environmental conditions, focusing on potential energy fluctuations from the ancient power systems. Translated from Rootsong.

It is hard to actually make fun for yourself here. Seriously, most of the departments here get their gameplay from reacting to shit that happens around them. This would be fine if we were as batshit as MRP, but as Menroka put succinctly, we’re playing highly conscientious characters that don’t cause trouble. It doesn’t matter if it’s the lore team, an antag, or a vetted story teller role: they all exist to give everyone something to do, but you can’t guarantee quality, consistency, or uniform satisfaction with any of those. Because all three are humans that are Fallible and can’t be online 24/7. It feels like, it feels like the ship needs to have some kind of generic goal or purpose to work towards, because almost every single role aboard the ship is so passive in nature. RP alone isn’t the solution when we have two threads up complaining about character retention/turnover, and the fact engineering’s population crashed when we tried to start the round with a fully charged main battery. I don’t think we have to give every department an overhaul, just something that’s worth working towards that doesn’t need some special third party to spoon feed us all the fun.

As a resident industrial enjoyer, I think they already are in a good spot in terms of balance and durability. Which is to say, they really cannot afford to be crippled by debuffs from new components, or additional maintenance requirements that would hurt their survivability. Industrials at low health already get punished hard for refusing to prioritize healing or avoidance, because if you get caught out on low health, there is no way you can run away from the fight, and you are too heavy and slow for anyone to pull you out of a bad situation. Hell, even if you aren't playing an industrial as a murder bot, you are bound to take constant chip damage and glancing hits from the environment/badguys. They can remain banned from security for all I care, I prefer seeing industrials in roles they were made to do. Like Bulwarks. The one thing I wouldn't mind to see, both for industrials and all other frames, are more time-sensitive injuries. Right now, IPC's effectively live in a stasis bed that's always on. If they get injured, they can waddle away somewhere and bide their time until they can get paste or a machinist. It's why mining on initial release was so industrial heavy, because anything organic kept bleeding the fuck out before they could get help. The time sensitivity should of course depend on the injury, and like organic injuries, the IPC should be able to do some kind of self care to mitigate or slow the effects of the injury until they get help. Lastly, I think it's annoying to see 80% of security IPC's being shells. They can still be selectable in sec, but I'd like to see more mechanics that address the implications of attempting to put what is essentially a luxury Rolls-Royce into the same role as a toyota hilux technical. Make them more expensive to repair. Make the synthskin an optional step to repair, so as the code red wears on, the shells look more ragged and terminator-like. Make their optics and sensory inputs more sensitive, idk, just something so it feels like you aren't just playing human+ with less sprinting endurance.

Scientists need an incinerator of their own, like the one xenobio has, to dispose of monkeys they test. They use monkeys to test modular guns, among other things. The exploratory chem lab is missing an ethanol cartridge. The requests console in the RnD lab isn't properly labelled. We could use our own operating theatre, for medical research. The old station had one. A generic test chamber would be swell, similar to the environmentally controlled cells in xenarchaology, but adapted for scientists to use.

The fact there's no lore that seamlessly facilitates these kinds of modes hurts player investment long term. Coupled with the fact everything in the cultist's toolkit is made to either kill or convert, I really doubt this is going to be fresh and interesting once the novelty's worn off.

Two things that don't give science any gameplay at all. With modular guns, you poke, prod, experiment, and test them in the range. It's an activity that forms the core of science gameplay, for most scientists. These? You hit the button and then give the officer the toys. Your officer. You don't play science. If a rework of the modular system is on the way I'd rather see it exchange the old system in the same PR, not gut it and leave us waiting.

I’m kind of happy where they’re at. Operations supplies stuff, machinists supply fancy stuff. I would go as far as to say the machinist has potential to become the primary supplier of protolathe/RPED related requests, while the scientist becomes the tertiary supplier, should the latter grow beyond what it currently is.

A large part of the issue is that we can only design events with the mechanics each department has. Those are the tools we use to conceive of activities for events. The problem is that the departments that could enable low stakes, non-combative events are too lacking in mechanics or purpose to have any staying power. Combat has the lion's share of complexity and engagement, medicine follows as a consequence of combat, and the fact that accidents are inevitable (Looking at you, person who drinks themselves to death during party events). Engineering has mechanics that are literally baked into the design of every single map. Command is self-evidently involved. Bridge crew are conditionally important, only if there is ship combat. That leaves cargo, service, and science. Hangar technicians are the weakest link, as their job encompasses three activities that are completely optional in the operation of the ship. You naturally cannot involve service unless you drop a kitchen down or make them cater for something. Science has the most potential on paper to contribute to rounds narratively, but they purposefully designed to contribute nothing but research levels, and lack any way to advise the crew on a given area of expertise. Because that isn't defined. I enjoyed silicon nightmares, but that arc was where we got to see all these design problems hit their absolute zenith. Engineering? Medical? Security? Command? There was plenty of work to go around. Everyone else? Cargo technicians had their shuttle break down on them, their one purpose nullified. Scientists did absolutely nothing to help in the crisis, any intelligence they could have helped acquire was instead fed through to us by Purpose and reports by the Konyang government. They did get the wreckage from the secondary transmitter to... doo... sciencey.... things.... with? But in reality it was just a paperweight. Service? It's not like it makes any narrative sense whatsoever for them to serve the hivebot beacon spaghetti or whatever. Since all we have to work with is combat and its consequences, it naturally followed that each event just ramped up in stakes and violence, until the last event where we gave everyone a gun and had them save the planet. So I agree with you 100%: Lore in the future should consider arcs or events that are less resource intensive and lower stakes. Events getting bigger and more violent are a consequence of regular gameplay in other departments lacking. Operations, Science, and BC's need more attention in order to move away from how we current design major events. The new round structure Matt announced is a colossal step in the right direction.

I concur with butterrobber. XO has always felt like a directionless role that competes with the OM in terms of functionality to me. This new XO feels like it was designed to not disrupt the current chain of command at all, and to minimize OOC administrative headache by putting it in such a confined, non-executive condition. Uselessness begets lack of interest begets lack of feedback begets lack of change.

Identity is a pretty big concept in IPC lore, and the avenues for it are skewed strongly towards being humancentric. From a lack of presented options, the self actualization process inevitably skews towards "wanting to be human", which is a narrative beat as old and derivative as Pinocchio or Frankenstein. Ever since the first directive lost narrative importance, this has only grown in prevalence, and the in-setting distinction between IPC's and humans is getting fuzzier. There are some factions that get into "post-human" territory, but they are either unplayable(Purpose, open exclusionists), or are under developed(Purpose again, current golden deep). This might sound like a rephrasing of Deseven's first question, but I'm specifically interested in how the setting itself can reflect the distinction between IPC's and humans, rather than just how you would advise people on it. How would you present contrast?

I have doubts this would improve the science experience. Modular guns foster interest in and of themselves for science players to go off on their own and tinker with them; regardless if security will accept them or not. Modular weapons have their problems firstly out of sheer negligence, long before we consider other factors like their baseline concept. The worst case scenario for these changes, is that security remains accustomed to playing with their own toys, and science loses an activity to do with their endless free time in exchange for a bunch of modules that they have no use for. Security is already terrible at asking for help from Science, and it's more like our players to put their trust in something consistently accessible rather than sporadically available. Maybe these weapon modules and ammo types could do something positive, but I don't want to see modular weapons get sacrificed concurrently when there's barely any mechanics to supplement interest in science, and no guarantee that the weapon modules can fill that particular void.

This is one one of the few roles that gets hardsuits without needing to be a head, or investing time and resources in acquiring them. Not sure about bridge crew, but FR's have the modules to get some immediate use out of them. I like how this role exposes people to Hardsuit use, it makes what the machinist can produce more valued. Most of the problems with medical are cultural, and most of the powercreep they've received are band-aid solutions made as a consequence to the weird fractured nature of medical's interdependencies. I know it's in style to beat down on them right now, but it won't fix anything if we don't think about what we're doing. There are better ways to ego check bad responders.

I would be disappointed if we completely gutted science of its white collar, experimenting nature and turned it into the Nathan Drake department. Having played the role a bunch lately, the biggest strengths of being a scientist is being able to procure unorthodox solutions to problems, and the implicit ability to retain a freakish amount of cross-departmental job knowledge. I've had great moments of cooperation with the crew, except for security. Those guys either assume we're antagonists(at least one of us usually is), or they deliberately exclude us out of fear of admin wrath. The culture surrounding science is just as neglectful as the mechanics are. RND is honestly a chore, even if you're using tech processors, so it'd be better if we just started with it already done. A lot of people have been talking about wanting to remove modular guns, but in absence of other activities, they're a pretty big reason why people occasionally fuck with science at all. I would only feel comfortable seeing them gone if we had something to supplant them, or just heavily nerfed the high end combinations so people would feel comfortable accepting them from science again. Nerfing them would actually buff them. I still agree that science's future is primarily in the overmap, and on planets that aren't exoplanets. The Horizon's stated mission is survey, not just for Phoron, but for potential sites for colonization. A common complaint is that we don't really do our stated mission at often, and most of the described abilities of the Horizon's sensor systems only exist in event announcements, and the sector printout BC's get. I propose we make science not an exploration department, but a survey department. Modular probes and drones, expansion of integrated circuit functionality, planetary survey equipment and beacons; Climatology and Geology. Hell, we could even give them access to the Horizon's mystical sensor equipment, where they can operate and improve it's various functions(whatever they may be). The goal of science should be to help the Horizon complete it's actual mission, while making expedition/survey operations more convenient with probes, enhanced sensor readings, and drones. While still working on their little experimental passion projects. (Oh and xenobotany/xenobio should eventually have an expedition game where they bring in planetary xenofauna/flora for analysis).

My position on this is pretty much this. Rather than continuing to expect antagonists to carry a 50 person server using something like four mercenaries, we instead introduce more roundstart spawns that have neutral or friendly involvement with the horizon that round, and slowly experiment with and tinker the third party spawns. Antagonist rounds have a habitual problem of turning the session into an active shooter simulation. Everyone just sort of stows themselves out of the way, and small talk becomes situationally inappropriate. Right now, our antagonists usually have just one A-plot. Even if you have something like Traitor, with multiple people out with different agendas, it's still one A-plot because security and command are supposed to fuck with them while the rest take radio callouts or keep out of the way. Imagine if we had B or even C plots stacked concurrently on top of the A-plot. The kind of plots which command a level of urgency for people to risk stepping out of lockdown to address them. Ship combat is a really good example of this. Like in the last event, we had boarders on top of ships to shoot at, Two vectors for intrigue running concurrently, involving multiple departments, and requiring people to step out of lockdown and contribute.