Boggle08

I'm still new, but I've had a great first impression communicating with you and your team. Outside of the elements of lore you wish to prioritize first, Do you have any plan or outline specifically for maintaining the Hegemony? I feel like they're our weakest character background, given that most characters I've seen over the years don't use the Hegemony as a source of identity, and treat it as an antagonistic force or as a foil in their personal conflicts. It works fine in that context, but not if the Hegemony is supposed to be a "baseline" for the species. In addition to the previous question, what are your thoughts of this dichotomy, and if it needs to be addressed?

The fact the little wiki chart disallows them from cavity surgery implicitly bars them from surgical processes. The chart and the fact we permit the steps listed on the wiki(with the exception of borgings) has just led to a lot of confusion over a niche ability that never comes up in-game. It does not help that the surgery tray for them is incomplete, and they work completely outside of medical's organizational structure. Just take them off the chart, and leave an asterisk somewhere that they can install new limbs. That's it.

T-the OOC lore... I like the idea. I think it would certainly be interesting to see a timeline of how our server's lore evolved. From hodunk shit coordinated over skype messenger, to what it is today. I guess the weird thing about it is that it'll inevitably be a narrative about aurora, rather than a 1:1 retelling if it's something on the official wiki. There is a lot of cursed shit and internet drama from in-between when the server started, to where it's at now. How much gets officially documented in that context will depend on how brave we feel.

Doling out interim head roles is something that the captain usually defers to me. Just have it so I run my choices past him for approval, why not? I'll take anything as long as it isn't a drastic contraction in their responsibilities and expectations. The point of this thread and the other one trying to come up with a name for them is really all about trying to nail down what the XO's role aboard the ship really is, and putting that into something we can actually put on the wiki. Making them only and just only the grand poobah of the bridge bunnies isn't something I particularly want. Maybe I'll flip if the overmap game gets more going on for it, or if the bridge has more interactions with the crew besides wanting their dependencies from engineering, and occasionally hosting expeditions that other roles have gotten better at doing.

In fact, the more I think about it, that could essentially be a directive for a second-in-command XO: To keep tabs on departments who have supervisor vacancies. It's already an implicit ability they have, and they're better at doing it than any other command role aside from the captain.

The HoP is in a unique position where it can seamlessly manage the administrative end of any department in a very "hands off" manner. What limits their power currently is that they must respect the lanes of departments who currently have a head. They essentially lost a leg with the OM change, in exchange for a function of the ship that, for the most part, sits in a vacuum from the rest of the field of play. The second-in-command proposal definitely has bugs I want to see worked out before I can be comfortable with it, but it will absolutely murder my interest in the role if it's relegated to nothing more than just the bridge QM. Why even give it command authority if that's the only thing it should concern itself with?

My concern is that the role will be directionless if it's on a full roster whose captain isn't consciously feeding it directives. If their command authority is weak in such a scenario, they're just going to go right back to the subordinate state they're in now. If their command authority is too strong, they might start to contradict what the captain or the rest of command is doing in an attempt to be helpful. Current XO shines on sparse command rosters, especially ones where there isn't any captain to begin with. I'm not necessarily against the idea of a second in command XO, but I feel like their directives need to be outlined in this thread for this suggestion to get anywhere. They can't just have their authority trickle down from the captain like they're a bridge crew, Quartermaster, or Service Manager.

I feel like I should make an addendum: without an expansion of the XO's powers or responsibilities, Giving them a second in command hat will be of superficial utility to captains. They have an entire radio channel that facilitates a cabinet of dedicated specialists he can delegate problems to. Not to mention the AI. They really don't need a middleman, unless we were to take away their headset.

They were in charge of cargo, one step above what was then the Quartermaster. I personally feel like the role had more power back then without lane overstepping, because you could remotely move funds around and work the cargo control function. In the event of a crisis(That couldn't just be mitigated by just calling the fucking ERT's), I could literally summon a box full of guns and weapons, from my office, and create my own crew militia using the armory I ordered.

What would be the extent of their personal autonomy with such an arrangement? I have vague memories that applying quick edits to your ID to work the cargo program or open doors is bad form unless you jump through your own paperwork hoop. The XO is still in it's weird command auxiliary role, and I feel like the people who are for the change need to do more than describe the fact that the captain can turn the XO into his personal, command authorized shitkicker. Specifics should be entertained. haha

I feel like you're onto something. I've played a ton of HoP on the aurora, and a little when we started with the Horizon. The role is suited to be an administrative "fixer" for when there's gaps in the roster. Expectations from the crew of what I'm capable of grow more and more as the command roster gets emptier and emptier. Clarifying what is overstepping versus what is perfectly fine is something the XO generally needs. When you're fulfilling a vacancy versus overstepping into someone's lane is a very circumstantial affair, unfortunately. Automatic crisis deference like that, that's fine in my mind. The role is well suited for it. As long as it's articulated well as an expectation, and the XO has the option to decline.

I'm not sure what your point is. Being second in command carries the implicit notion that you supersede the rest of your peers with respect to command authority. The Captain/XO relationship your describing sounds similar to the dynamic between XO's and their constituent BC's. If there is no difference in the XO's authority prior to this change, why entertain it besides "flavor?"

This entails much more than a simple change. The aformentioned council dynamic is an environment where equals among equals can advise, question, and second guess the captain. There's a mechanism built into this arrangement that(theoretically lol) allows command to overturn decisions as a collective. We'd have to rethink command's internal decision making process and manage an internal chain of command that alters itself every time someone different shows up on the manifest. For the XO role itself, without a captain, this is effectively a captain slot. I outrank everyone if my captain isn't on, so I can go ahead and give myself interim. Doesn't matter if I'm something besides a human or a skrell too. What is allowed to play XO might have to change because of this (and frankly, I'm not partial to drastic change on the matter). Another issue will be the XO's relationship between the rest of command and the Captain. Are they meant to be the captain's closest advisor, or a yes man and enforcer of their command authority? Are they in a position where it is proper for them to second guess and question the captain when in council with the rest of command? I could see the XO destroying the balance of power by being a regulation backed element to strengthen any captain's position, or as a destabilizing element that can rapidly undermine their boss's authority. This is a curious idea to ponder, but it needs to be pondered.

Wassup, just some questions: 1. How does Looping Song feel about the Eternal overall, especially with respect to the other sects? 2. How does Looping Song feel about encountering new gestalts who are not culturally federation in general?

I really think we should avoid putting in any roadblocks into medical's apparatus and turning them into obligations for the roboticist to carry out. From medical's end, this will frustrate the hell out of them, from the roboticists end, this places medbay obligations upon them. And when you have medbay obligations, that means you spend most of your time hovering between service and the bay, and you drop everything you're doing and run because someone's looking bad on sensors. The roboticist is not a dedicated medical role, forcing it to be like one will screw up it's gameplay loop and priorities. Hell, if you really want to read deep into it, if mechanical organs become too much of a byzantine contrivance, it'll become a disincentive to select them in loadout, or make established characters that have them. If giving the roboticist some identity with their medical abilities is so important, then I would use a template I've seen before ingame: acting as impromptu physicians in scenarios where there's no medical. We could give them the ability to take out shrapnel, make it clear that they can use the GTR machines, but they gotta sit at rock bottom for delegation as they have been as a tradeoff.

I can't speak for the overall direction of this facet lore development, but curtailing the ideas presented by the SRF seems a little premature, if it's with the intention of dissuading people who have the wrong idea about our server. ATLAS was before my time, but judging by old accounts, They were practically their own meta-clique. We don't have anything like that right now.

Meddoids get weird about the machinist doing shit, because it doesn't cleanly fit into the mechanism that is medbay delegation. If medical is fully staffed, the machinist is butting into a role whose entire existence is clicking people who are on the table. If it's just physicians, they're bound to feel the same way. They're here to click people who are on the table if a surgeon can't do it. The whole delegation thing came about because medical used to fight over the traffic that comes through their doors, so seeing something that is not bound by those laws confuses and frustrates them. It doesn't help that the Machinist exists outside of the medical department. They don't share access with medical, and at least to my vague understanding, they don't share a commline either. Because their surgery chart is so narrow, anything that isn't a simple organ fix is going to require someone from medical to be standing in the room with them, or else the patient is going to roll off the table incomplete. They can't fix bones, shrapnel, arterial, or brains. The surgical operations they can perform are extremely intrusive and grossly inappropriate depending on the severity of the injury. The machinist also has a plethora of tasks and responsibilities outside of just medicine that I haven't even brought up yet, which further divides their attention away from being a dedicated medical role. It isn't impossible for the roboticist to be asked to help out in medical, but they have always been at the bottom of medical's queue for consultation, outside of organ printing which I don't think counts; or they shine on lowpop. If a paradigm needs to be outlined for them with respect to medical, I see this as being the one. The one thing I believe that should always be brought before the roboticist is limb installation, however. It's cooler that way.

There's a lot of ways to peel this banana in the long term. We could make it so you need two free hands in order to insert a new shell into the PEAC, requiring the operator to either drop the weapon to load it, or have someone stand next to him as a loader. We could allow the shell to retain it's momentum and penetrate through certain objects. Hell, it could even be used as a tool for breaching reinforced areas using special shells. I saw an officer several months ago try to bore through telecomms using the PEAC, and it barely did anything four rounds in. I agree with Kyres, a gun like this shouldn't feel impotent, and it'd suck if turned into a planetside 2 situation where trying to use the AP/Anti-personnel option on people is a stupid idea, only because the resistance tables say so. We should be balancing it around being a mobile emplacement weapon that uses collateral damage, clunky logistics, and a need for coordination to offset it's sheer power.

I feel like the environmental damage when the shell detonates needs to be more consequential. Using a PEAC inside of the Horizon is like getting into a rocket launcher fight aboard an aircraft carrier. It shouldn't easily break floors, that would be too much of an advantage, but it should absolutely eviscerate any consoles, engineering subsystems, machines, windows, walls, and airlocks that get caught in its wake. If every impact results in a damaged section of the ship, the thing the ISD is supposed to be protecting, then every shot made will require more thinking, precision, and care on the part of the user. This is a gun that should be balanced around shooting once, with a specific purpose in mind. If regular use of the PEAC is consistent with what OP is describing, it sounds more like a primary weapon that starts and ends fights the same way stun combat works on other servers: Instantly, and with no hope of retaliation if you get tagged even once.

Engineering has the Leviathan. Between it and the demands of the new guns, optimizing the ship's power and subsystems will become extremely important. This is what I look forwards to as an engineer main. As for damage control, Matt explained to me that the position for shells when they spawn into the local map is fairly randomized and inaccurate. Lots of 50/50 chance shots. Damage control is something I'm concerned about myself, one because our means of dealing with it has always been limited, and it can easily become tedious or overwhelming if it stacks up too fast. If it does become a problem, easiest thing we could do is map in a bunker with better damage control equipment for emergencies. RCD's and metal foam grenade launchers. Alternatively, we could get some new stuff, or change the way shots are calculated. Bottom line is that can develop contingencies to remedy this problem.

You're assuming that overmap combat won't increase the demand or appeal of playing in the roles needed for it. All of our antagonist roles are shipside, and because of that, security and medical are consistently populated to meet the opposition. Perhaps something similar will happen for cargo, engineering, and bridge crew roles. We won't know if there aren't going to be opportunities to use the new ship weapons. Just because of how manpower intensive the new ship combat looks, it'd probably be wise to bump up the required readies for the antag change I'm proposing.

Maybe this suggestion is a bit premature, but the point is that this gamemode should get the priority to be overmap worthy, if or when we decide giving antagonists and hostile third parties access to ship-to-ship combat. Comparing raw equipment and resources, raider has always been a shittier merc on paper. This'll give them a niche distinct from that.

I would be more comfortable with this being a privilege granted by an overseeing admin, rather than something that runs autonomously; If at all. Part of what the whitelisting process does is hold people accountable to not abuse the species' mechanics of whatever they're applying for. This suggestion operates outside of this paradigm. While it might be nice to get more uniform offstation antags, I think people will stop appreciating it once we get round after round of offstation antags mysteriously picking certain species' with mechanical proclivities towards combat, and pushing them beyond what's acceptable.

The core issue is that borg characters fly against the convention of job knowledge, access restrictions, and several different mechanics that most of the playable mobs in the game have to contend with. In order to facilitate them without absolutely ruining the experience, They operate with their lawset, but also numerous unspoken conventions that reduce the experience to playing an appliance. Borgs have shitty characterization because there's actually incentive against characterization. I've spoken numerous times about it with synthetic lore and the mods, and there is a general disdain seeing borgs that have a personality and form attachments. It ends with them violating the principles of the job, or their lawset outright in the pursuit of the relationships they form. Cyborgs and bound intelligences deal with some interesting themes, but there is very little wiggle room to actually explore them, and no investment from most of the station because they expect you to just be an appliance. At this point, you can better tread over the themes presented in the station bound role by playing certain IPC backgrounds, or even do what I did and play a heavily, heavily augmented human. The only way for stationbounds to have a real future beyond removal or stagnation is if they are rebuilt, practically from the ground up, to cut back on the omnipotence/omniscience the job currently manifests, and yet still have it so they can be of some use in their niche as department vacancy fillers.

Someone needs to look at the guide to surgery on the wiki then. I used that for this discussion, and it insists the only thing roboticists can do now is cyborgify and affix limbs. I've only seen roboticists interact with medical in two ways: as stand-ins on lowpop, and consultants on highpop. If you're talking about making roboticist a member of the medical department, I don't see it fitting well. Medical already has friction in delegating work between people, the roboticist would continue to function in an auxiliary capacity. Specialized roles in the department will continue to have priority when it comes to their area of the med game. It adds more cooks into a department that constantly debates with itself if it has too many cooks.