Omicega

BYOND Key: Omicega Character names: Alicia Parker -- Security Guard Yingmei -- Bartender Mahisa Quraishi -- Security Guard ZH Ji-Seon 451 -- Surgeon Maria Faraci -- Engineer I have others on top of these, but these are the five I've played the most of recently. How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Since mid/late September of 2020. I dabbled for a few days at a time in the distant past, too. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist? I want to play some of the head of staff roles as well as a consular officer from time to time. I'll be honest and say that I don't really see why these roles are gated off to begin with -- I certainly don't think the whitelist helps ensure any level of quality in the players and/or characters that I see in these roles, personally -- but this is really what the answer boils down to. Why did you come to Aurora? I played on CM for a couple of years -- primarily held there by the roleplay angle, believe it or not -- and left in about October-ish of 2019 following a final decline in standards that couldn't really be ignored. I went to Bay for a brief while before migrating to Hestia after a few months of trying to cope with Bay's community wore me out. Having tried Aurora for a brief period around that time I never found it gripping enough to fully engage me (that and the footstep sounds were atrocious), but when I dipped my head back into Aurora in late September this year I haven't really looked back. I love the standard of roleplay on offer here and find great enjoyment in getting involved with the community. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: I have. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? To the best of my knowledge I have never been banned, formally warned, or had administrative action of any sort taken against me that was not later overturned. ======= Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is and should be about: I think it should be about fulfilling interactions and ongoing personal storylines between interesting and fleshed-out characters. I personally prefer playing characters that are more on the 'grounded' end of the scale (more of a working everyday individual than a novel protagonist or something), so I have a natural tendency to prefer that end of things, but ultimately I really enjoy seeing the creativity other people put into their characters and how they can bring interesting interactions to the table. I don't necessarily agree that it's something everyone has to agree on, at times -- sometimes your characters will be put in places you'd rather not have had them put, and dealing with that in a believable manner is part and parcel of roleplaying a character properly. As long as the setting as a whole maintains a level of believability that rides above a certain level, I think roleplay really does just boil down to the way individual characters interact with one another and build relationships; whether that's on a longer-term scale, or in the context of a single round. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is ingame? First and foremost -- they are the most important factor inside a department where new players are concerned. They have the most weight in ensuring that cadets/apprentices/interns don't end up confused and lost and alone for two hours, and should use their influence in this regard to make sure these sorts of players have a fulfilling experience as learners in learner roles. This duty of care extends to their department as a whole, of course -- the head of security has an integral role in coordinating security's response to antagonists on secret rounds, for example -- but I think it should mainly focalise on learner roles. Finally, they are the one line of IC contact between the ongoing round and online staff in the form of Central Command (and distress beacons etc), and need to have this in mind depending on how the round is playing out. In short, they need to be ready to fax as well as being switched on with regards to their department and its workings. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them? I don't really think whitelisted players have any extra responsibilities ahead of other players, to be honest. I'm going to be blunt and say that I've seen absolutely no difference in quality from command whitelisted players and players without the whitelist; there are people of all levels of quality on both sides of the scale. They have more of an ability to impact the round of non-whitelisted players, for sure, but I think the same basic concepts of decency, empathy, and an overall understanding of what it means to try and make the round fun for everyone involved (antagonists included) apply to heads of staff and whitelisted roles just the same as they apply to anyone else. I can only say that I'd try to play my heads of staff with the same level of quality as I apply to the rest of my gameplay here -- with the same care and attention to how other players' rounds are affected by my actions. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau Ceti and how it affected your character and their career? The most recent story arc with the Solarian invasion weighed extremely heavily on Alicia (my main character at the moment). Being at odds with her home nation took its toll on her, and while the initial strife following the invasion itself has mostly settled down, anti-Solarian sentiment is something that continues to pop up from other members of the crew. Clandestine and other canon events helped shape a good few key aspects of her personality so far, and I've done my best to incorporate development offered to me by the server's ongoing storylines into her personal arc. Now Biesel and the Spur as a whole are moving into a quieter period, the fallout from the Solarian incursion is giving her more and more thoughts about where to take her life from here -- whether returning to Silversun and the Alliance is ever going to be worth it, or whether somewhere like Biesel and its intense corporate presence is something she can stomach for the longer term. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Head of Personnel, Head of Security, and Chief Medical Officer for the time being. I don't know how much I'll touch consular officers or chief engineers in the near future, if ever. Captain is something I'll probably never touch. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking: I won't be using any of my existing characters for command. I have a concept in mind for a Golden Deep IPC as a head of personnel, but it's still being fleshed out. I really enjoy the concept of the Golden Deep in particular, and it's not something I've had much room to explore on account of most of the fitting roles being gatekept behind the command whitelist here on Aurora. IPCs are a race I've really been eager to dip into in every respect after getting the whitelist, and I am excited to see how I can blend an IPC's goals and motivations in with the gameplay and roleplay opportunities afforded by roles like the head of personnel. On top of that, I have a Lunan HOS concept that I want to float, I think. I'll be happy to update either this post or add a later post with the characters' names once I have them fully finalised. EDIT: I'm playing these characters in command positions for now: Bianca Costa-Leveque, Head of Personnel Quu'quuii Xim'naa, Head of Personnel Lucia Zhao, Head of Security How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I've been around, both on SS13 and on other games with roleplaying scenes. Aurora has given me a lot of fun and interesting creativity space to play with as far as character concepts and the general quality of lore goes, and I think by now I'm beginning to feel way more adjusted to that. There are some roleplayers here and elsewhere that still manage to blow my mind in terms of the inventiveness and overall quality of their roleplay as well as the speed with which they can come up with it. I don't want to put a number out of ten on what I think my ability is, but I've been roleplaying for upwards of a decade now and feel as if I have a pretty good grasp on building and playing new characters as a whole. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Yes. Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yes. Extra notes: This time around I should actually have the time (and motivation) to devote to the week long trial, barring anything else unexpected cropping up. This app is essentially lifted from the last one I made with adjustments made as necessary, since as far as I am aware the last one was only failed due to me only managing to fit one (1) command round in during the entire period.

Hello, I don't know Butter all that well OOCly but I tend to main security and have come up against their antag play a few times. I'm mentioning this specifically because there is a pretty uncompromising and vicious post going after that particular aspect of their gameplay, and I can say that I've had basically no issue at all with their play in that regard. In fact, on the one merc round I've shared with them as part of the same antag team, they were the loudest voice against a gunplay focused angle of antag play, and were essentially entirely pacifistic until the end in spite of how other team members chose to escalate things. As far as their IC conduct goes regarding non-antag play, I also have no complaints. I've interacted with their trialled head of personnel on a few occasions and think it's a well-portrayed character. Their OOC conduct is also very cordial. I think they deserve positive more feedback than they are getting, hence why I'm posting at all, since I've sat on the fence about it for too long. +1

I don't believe that Diona do feel pain or suffer enough from a stunbaton to be considered reasonably detainable by those methods, as my video evidence demonstrates. Unless there's some sort of code difference I'm not aware of between my local copy of the Aurora repo and the live server, I'm contending that even if I had resorted to my baton and disruptor I would have had no hope at all of grounding you. I emptied three full stunning weapons into a Diona in the footage provided with no visible effect other than a white screen and a few pain messages on the Diona's BYOND client, for reference, so I find it impossible to agree with your assessment that they react meaningfully at all to pain.

@Yonnimer Hello. I had a brief discussion with Alberyk just now on Discord about whether to open a new complaint directed at you or just to post in this one, and Alb told me to just post here again and @ you so you'd be aware of the post. When I initially wrote the complaint I knew you were someone who played Diona to a large degree, but I didn't know you were in fact the species maintainer for it. If you weren't deadminned during the ahelp and ticket exchange between myself and Garn, and assuming my video evidence is an accurate portrayal of how Diona react to stuns from carbines, batons etc., I'd like to know if you said anything in msay/asay or another staff channel to try and correct Garn when he pushed forward with the idea that a stunbaton is enough to detain a Diona successfully. Barring there being something wrong with my test conditions on the local server, I don't see how this is accurate at all, and I'm being blunt and straightforward when I say that I'd like to know if you took any action at all to let Garn know that he was warning me to employ entirely ineffective methods when arresting Diona in the future. Obviously I cannot see mod or admin chat but if you were able to see it and the ongoing ticket and didn't at any point say anything about how resistant Diona are to pain then I want to expand my complaint to include you for your inaction as the ultimate authority on the Diona species and its workings on a ticket that came to involve confusion about their exact mechanics. I am aware that you were involved as a player in the ticket and I'm not suggesting that you should have taken it, but if you didn't say anything at all in mod/admin chat regarding the confusion -- that only got highlighted because I specifically went out of my way to test these things locally! -- I'd like to know why.

I think it should go without saying that I wasn't aware Diona were so resistant to pain while I was being spoken to by Garnascus, otherwise I would have contested the decision even more fiercely in the ticket itself. It was only because someone unrelated contacted me after the round and advised me to test the effectiveness on non-lethals on Diona before posting this that I bothered to look into it at all, otherwise I would have taken him fully at face value.

BYOND Key: (This is your Byond Login/Ckey) Omicega Staff BYOND Key: (This is the Byond Login/Ckey of the staff member) Garnascus Game ID: (If applicable. Game ID of the round on which the incident took place. If you don't remember the exact one, then the round after or the round before works as well.) ca7-dvs0 Reason for complaint: (State your reason for your complaint) I'm not satisfied with receiving this formal administrative warning for excessive force used against a Diona antagonist and want it either struck from my record entirely or downgraded to a note. Evidence/logs/etc: full logs of the encounter and ticket logs non lethals comparison vs human and diona Additional remarks: I don't have a lot to say other than what I said in the ticket and that I'd like a second opinion on the logs present. It's come to my attention that the Diona in question was played by Yonnimer, another member of staff and someone intimately familiar with the species as a whole, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't think this factored into the nature of Garn's approach to my ticket. I am vaguely aware that there have been issues with the strength of Diona antagonists during past eras of Aurora. My experience with Diona, as I said in the ticket, boils down to the Bay iteration of the species, where they are to my knowledge banned from being an antag at all due to how powerful they can be. I would accept being spoken to about some of the things Garn mentioned in the ticket -- that much is fine -- but I'm contesting having it made into a formal warning given the context of the round and several other factors. I don't know how I can be expected to be familiar with every niche of every weird species here -- Diona don't feel pain on Bay at all, among other things that make them vastly more powerful -- and I don't agree with the ruling that I should be expected to put my rifle away in the middle of an ongoing firefight to engage an armed Diona that seems to actively be trying to take someone as a body shield. For reference, the Diona in question didn't die, as was alleged by Garn at one point in the ticket, and they were to my knowledge successfully detained following the firefight. This encounter came at the very end of a round wherein the raider team took the head of security and the captain (all of command staff at the time) hostage and made several disjointed threats regarding their safety along with vague, incoherent demands, so tension had been extremely high for a long time. I am not sure what the roleplay rationale behind two raiders deciding to leave their ship and decapitate Pun Pun in the bar was, but considering that as of the time of the logs in question they were already considered more than hostile I want to contest the formal nature of the warning. I feel as if this is a textbook example of baiting security into a firefight for no good reason and I don't think this was taken into consideration during Garn's handling of the issue. Furthermore, I am contesting very strongly that you can detain a Diona non-lethally at all, as Garn says. Here is some of my local testing uploaded as an MP4: https://streamable.com/lbnee6 I was told by Garn that a stunbaton would have sufficed, but here I empty an entire energy carbine, an entire disruptor pistol, and an entire stunbaton into a Diona I'm playing on an alternate BYOND account without it suffering any ill-effects whatsoever. It went whitescreen during the whole process of being shot, but at no point did it go to ground or seem impaired by all the pain damage being inflicted. For these reasons and those I've already listed above, I'd like the decision looked at again.

Not to be a downer here, but this seems like the kind of thing that could start a precedent for OC Dominian house cape custom item requests. Wouldn't a more elegant solution for something like this be something like implementing a recolourable stripe on the generic Dominian cape loadout item, along with a customisable name and description field?

Hi, The player complaint rules tell me not to post if not involved, but since I'm directly referenced in evidence here I'm assuming that's enough "involvement" to warrant a post. If that's not the case, sorry! I had no idea who Carpe was before the conversation I had with them in #human-general on the lore Discord. All I do know is that I saw a discussion about Aurora human lore drawing heavily off "X culture/ethnicity from present-day Earth but in space!!" and decided to get involved, because I think that kind of worldbuilding has some definite merit to it even if it's kind of unrealistic and hand-wavey from a real world point of view. What I got out of it was (to me) an unreasonably aggressive back-and-forth with someone who doesn't know me at all, and while I was unfortunately stuck on mobile to boot. I've dealt with more than enough people using the same kind of dismissive, snippy, rapid-fire "umm" and "no?" argument templates both here on Aurora and in other places, and I felt entitled to call them out on it. What really annoyed me was the insincere apology afterwards -- or at least, an apology that I'm going to just flat out label as insincere. There's no actual proof of this beyond their continued behaviour, but similar faux-apologies are things I've had to climb past before, and personally I think I was about as gracious as I could be in turning it down. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now. Anyone who knows me even vaguely here knows I have a temper that's probably even shorter than short. I've flown off the handle with people a few times; but when I'm actually pushing the boat out and apologising in good faith, I like to think I mean it. I'm going to be really generous here and say that maybe it's just an issue with how Carpe words things, but given the continued pattern of behaviour here -- some of which I experienced personally as a first impression! -- I don't know if I'm really buying any of the repeated apologies for their tone, behaviour, or anything else as overly genuine. It feels like part one of the strategy is to piss off the other party debating you, and then when they call you out on it or, God forbid, lash back out, you retreat behind the time-tested apology/excuse hybrid shield and become immune from retaliation. I don't buy it, personally.

Security as a department offers gameplay on both extremes of the scale. In extended or low-intensity rounds, you might as well not exist from a gameplay perspective, but the amount of stuff you can (or have to) do slowly creeps up with the amount of bad stuff happening. The sweet spots are when you have literally nothing to do, because you can chairRP in the bar or whatever, or when you have something antag-related that's actually engaging to pursue. This essentially writes off a ton of stuff like random welderbombs, ninjas stealing the spare at 00:30, corrupt form wizards, and more or less anything related to malf AI, because all of those are things that you tend to get agitated into trying to deal with while having no way of actually doing anything about it. This doesn't really tend to happen to any other department -- nobody starts yelling at paramedics for not being able to go and locate someone dying somewhere on the station with no sensors or GPS -- but when you have pressure being put on you from multiple angles to do something about the bad thing happening and you can't actually stop the bad thing unless the bad thing basically lets itself get caught, it can get very old very quick. You also have a dynamic where a portion of the playerbase holds two very opposite views on security in parallel and without a shred of irony -- the idea that security is monopolising all of the interesting antag behaviour while simultaneously being expected to teleport to medical on command to deal with the latest group of raiders who've walked down virology stairs and interrupted the roleplay session in reception. I feel like a lot of the non-security playerbase wants to have their cake and eat it too regarding antagonist behaviour -- security is expected to get the 'shitters' into the brig (or deadchat) ASAP to appease people who'd rather not be disturbed pursuing their quieter extended roleplay moments, but those selfsame people will turn around a little later and start pointing fingers when more 'interesting' antagonism (which is subjective anyway) is interrupted by often-realistic consequences. In any case, all this thread is doing so far is showing that people are shit at debating this kind of thing in good faith. Being criticised for not engaging event characters with admin-level gear on a canon event round is one thing (yeah, let me just essentially permakill my character while bending over backwards to the doublethink here -- security monopolises antag/event stuff too often except when I think they should push things into a gunfight ASAP, in which case how dare you not do your job???), but when any and all arguments regarding security eventually get boiled down in some respect to the same vague, passive-aggressive accusations of the entire department's being bullies in some way or another it really does make you think. tl;dr I don't know who Carver is but his post has all the hot takes you need, read it instead

I can't really agree with this, though. Zavodskoi tides aside, the vanilla NT security uniform is white and blue. Idris security (I know right) tends to be turquoisey-teal with a lot of white on the uniform underneath, and EPMCs have bluish-white-grey highlights all over them as well. I don't think of black as being security's aesthetic colour; it's blue, if anything, since that colour shows up a hell of a lot more. This seems like a weird way to defend your point here.

I didn't have time to comment on the originals, but I'll leave my two cents on the updated sprites now. The new disruptors are very good. Initially I thought they were worse, but having slept on it and looked at the old disruptor sprites again I realised I must have just been very tired. I like them a lot! The new laser rifle I'm not sure about. Something is off about it -- I don't think the shiny white/chrome colour does it for me. It also looks very chunky. I think the sprite is too tall overall, even if the length is fine. I love the shotgun. It looks simple yet suitably futuristic. The initial new ion was, to be blunt about it, dreadful -- but the revised version looks really sleek. It's my favourite sprite out of the lot now, when before it was easily my least favourite. Thanks for taking the feedback so far on board regarding it, Kyres! The blaster and thumper sprites look... okay, I guess. I don't really have much to say other than that they're like sidegrades to the old sprites. I think you're trying too hard to stick with the old sprite designs with these and limiting the redesign possibilities, because the old blaster/thumper sprites really aren't that good anyway. I'd like to see you be a bit more adventurous with them. tl;dr these sprites could be merged as-is following the revisions and only the laser rifle would look out of place, at least in my book

Hello, Regarding Geeves' footnote about not wanting to post the rude DMs he received, presumably out of ostensible concern for my reputation or something, I'm going to firstly make it clear that I don't care at all if the DMs are shared, and go one step further and outright provide a Pastebin for anyone who's interested to look at them. There is nothing in there that I don't still stand by. https://pastebin.com/KMwn1QLw In addition to what I've said in there I don't have much else to add to this. I found the captain to be unhelpful, passive, and reluctant to step up to the plate in any capacity whatsoever while I was in round, and made no secret of my frustration with it. I admit that I think what I said was borderline OOC in IC, even if you could take cryoing out of the round as being a thoroughly IC mechanic. The main issue I have with this whole affair stems entirely from what Geeves said to me on Discord immediately after the fact -- namely, the threats that this should 'not happen again' and so on. I am perfectly fine with being warned, noted, or whatevered for my actions as long as it comes from a member of staff who actually has the authority to do that. I am not okay with being concern trolled and passive-aggressive apology fishing in my DMs in lieu of actually reporting an issue to staff so it can be resolved. I want to make it perfectly clear that I was not trying to call anyone's bluff by saying I would report it myself, and @MattAtlas can corroborate that I approached him on Discord about it within a couple of minutes. I said what I said with the full understanding that it was potentially a warnable/punishable/whateverable offense -- I think it's borderline at best -- but in the end I am fine with whatever the staff handling the complaint decide. As far as I was concerned, it was water under the bridge until I received the series of DMs insinuating that it would not be okay if it happened again, with very little actual substance to back that up. I am upset by how Geeves has chosen to handle this and I resent the footnotes to his complaint even more. The implication that I would not be okay with my 'rude' DMs being publicly shown is as irritating and aggravating to me as everything else about this complaint, as is the mysterious cabal of people Geeves has apparently spoken to who are allegedly backing him up. In short, I accept the complaint about what I said as being valid but wholly reject Geeves' behaviour in handling it. As Aurora development staff I would have expected him to take any potential rulebreaks he had regarding me to staff first and foremost instead of handling it as he did.

I appreciate the two extensions to no end, but ultimately I haven't really been able to pull up the motivation to play much command at all over the past weeks. A combination of factors throughout late November and December so far have torpedoed me to no end. I'll reapply -- probably with the same application -- when I have more of a chance to actually leverage the command hours needed in a relatively short timespan to power through a trial, but this can be closed now. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your responsiveness on Discord regarding this app so far.

My thoughts haven't changed, but I will bump them again at Danse's request. There are rare exceptions to wizard rounds being bad (I just came out of one) but the overall sentiment still applies, and it isn't worth wading through the 9/10 funny meme ones to get to the one that's actually halfway passable and conducive to a high roleplay server.

Hi, I'd like to ask for an extension on this. I didn't play at all last week on account of the scale of the ongoing event catching me a little off-guard; I wasn't really up for figuring out a way to introduce new characters during a total Aurora lockdown that made any sense to me.

I am interested in the permanent repercussions of the arc much more so than the arc itself. I don't know if a week of Solarian ghost roles and a flat lore ban on your character living anywhere than the Aurora for X amount of time is really what I was expecting or hoping for. For me, this arc peaked at Clandestine -- which was wonderfully mysterious and exciting in every way except for the hellish lag. Everything since then has been a steady spiral downwards -- from the conspiracy that suffered very hard from having already-established players monopolise it and the generated activity/intrigue as best they could (and yes, I blame the lore team in part here for not trying more to dislodge said individuals) -- to the weird pacing where everything alternately stuck for weeks then unstuck again just as quickly. I don't know if most of these are objective criticisms, though, to be honest. I think it's more just that this arc really isn't for me -- it certainly offers a lot more for people whose characters enjoy taking a more active and (to me) unrealistic level of involvement in all these wacky tabacky megacorporate geopolitical affairs. I'm not really looking to stack any of my characters' arcs with 500 confirmed Solarian kills via ghostspawners or anything, and the opaque nature of the "no travel to/from Aurora for a week/whatever" is really constricting both my desire to play any of my characters, whether they are established or new. Still, Kyres keeps asking for feedback, so here it is -- now without any (or at least most?) of the cynicism with which I've delivered it before in dchat or wherever else.

BYOND Key: Omicega Character names: Alicia Parker -- Security Guard Yingmei -- Bartender I have others, but these two are by far the most significant and well-known, I think. How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Two months now in a solid block. I dabbled for a few days at a time in the past, but this is the first time I've really seriously played here. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist? I want to play some of the head of staff roles as well as a consular officer from time to time. I'll be honest and say that I don't really see why these roles are gated off to begin with -- I certainly don't think the whitelist helps ensure any level of quality in the players and/or characters that I see in these roles, personally -- but this is really what the answer boils down to. Why did you come to Aurora? I played on CM for a couple of years -- primarily held there by the roleplay angle, believe it or not -- and left in about October-ish of 2019 following a final decline in standards that couldn't really be ignored. I went to Bay for a brief while before migrating to Hestia after a few months of trying to cope with Bay's community wore me out. Having tried Aurora for a brief period around that time I never found it gripping enough to fully engage me (that and the footstep sounds were atrocious), but when I dipped my head back into Aurora in late September this year I haven't really looked back. I love the standard of roleplay on offer here and find great enjoyment in getting involved with the community. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: I have. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? To the best of my knowledge I have never been banned, formally warned, or had administrative action of any sort taken against me. ======= Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is and should be about: I think it should be about fulfilling interactions and ongoing personal storylines between interesting and fleshed-out characters. I personally prefer playing characters that are more on the 'grounded' end of the scale (more of a working everyday individual than a novel protagonist or something), so I have a natural tendency to prefer that end of things, but ultimately I really enjoy seeing the creativity other people put into their characters and how they can bring interesting interactions to the table. I don't necessarily agree that it's something everyone has to agree on, at times -- sometimes your characters will be put in places you'd rather not have had them put, and dealing with that in a believable manner is part and parcel of roleplaying a character properly. As long as the setting as a whole maintains a level of believability that rides above a certain level, I think roleplay really does just boil down to the way individual characters interact with one another and build relationships; whether that's on a longer-term scale, or in the context of a single round. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is ingame? First and foremost -- they are the most important factor inside a department where new players are concerned. They have the most weight in ensuring that cadets/apprentices/interns don't end up confused and lost and alone for two hours, and should use their influence in this regard to make sure these sorts of players have a fulfilling experience as learners in learner roles. This duty of care extends to their department as a whole, of course -- the head of security has an integral role in coordinating security's response to antagonists on secret rounds, for example -- but I think it should mainly focalise on learner roles. Finally, they are the one line of IC contact between the ongoing round and online staff in the form of Central Command (and distress beacons etc), and need to have this in mind depending on how the round is playing out. In short, they need to be ready to fax as well as being switched on with regards to their department and its workings. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them? I don't really think whitelisted players have any extra responsibilities ahead of other players, to be honest. I'm going to be blunt and say that I've seen absolutely no difference in quality from command whitelisted players and players without the whitelist; there are people of all levels of quality on both sides of the scale. They have more of an ability to impact the round of non-whitelisted players, for sure, but I think the same basic concepts of decency, empathy, and an overall understanding of what it means to try and make the round fun for everyone involved (antagonists included) apply to heads of staff and whitelisted roles just the same as they apply to anyone else. I can only say that I'd try to play my heads of staff with the same level of quality as I apply to the rest of my gameplay here -- with the same care and attention to how other players' rounds are affected by my actions. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau Ceti and how it affected your character and their career? The current ongoing arc with the Solarian invasion is weighing extremely heavily on Alicia (my main character at the moment). Being at odds with her home nation is taking its toll on her, and while she's doing her best to suck it up and move through the fear and concern burdening her it isn't always as easy as it should be. Every day seems to bring a new and troubling piece of news from the Bugle, and the impending war (or conflict) is about to come very close to home -- potentially in and around it, considering that she lives in Mendell City. As someone involved more closely to many of these affairs than she'd really like, given her work as a security contractor on the Aurora, Alicia is riding a fine line between trying to protect herself and those close to her while not either torpedoing her career through a lack of engagement with her job or flat out getting herself killed through the events of the days and weeks to come. More than that is hard to say, since I have no idea how the rest of this arc is going to play out and where things will end up -- but suffice to say that canonical events regarding her have definitely impacted heavily on her personality and character development, and are a constant factor in how I play her round to round. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Head of Personnel and potentially Chief Medical Officer in the short-term, as well as very potentially a consular or two. I'm not sure on that. I would look to branch out into Head of Security later on too, perhaps, but after the trial period. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking.: I won't be using any of my existing characters for command. I have a concept in mind for a Golden Deep IPC as either a consular or head of personnel (probably a head of personnel, but I am still finalising the details). I really enjoy the concept of the Golden Deep in particular, and it's not something I've had much room to explore on account of most of the fitting roles being gatekept behind the command whitelist here on Aurora. IPCs are a race I've really been eager to dip into in every respect after getting the whitelist, and I am excited to see how I can blend an IPC's goals and motivations in with the gameplay and roleplay opportunities afforded by roles like the head of personnel and a consular officer. How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I've been around, both on SS13 and on other games with roleplaying scenes. Aurora has given me a lot of fun and interesting creativity space to play with as far as character concepts and the general quality of lore goes, and I think by now I'm beginning to feel way more adjusted to that. There are some roleplayers here and elsewhere that still manage to blow my mind in terms of the inventiveness and overall quality of their roleplay as well as the speed with which they can come up with it. I don't want to put a number out of ten on what I think my ability is, but I've been roleplaying for upwards of a decade now and feel as if I have a pretty good grasp on building and playing new characters as a whole. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Yes. Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yes. Extra notes: I'm going to be starting a new job next week, so my available time will be cut down significantly as far as Aurora goes, but I'll endeavour to put in the hours required if I do make it to a command trial.

Can I bump this without being crucified? I hope so. This is event is doubly annoying for bartenders now that fragile glassy items smash when thrown. It is also infinitely more annoying for IPCs, who can get whacked with a vendor-tossed item and have to go bug a roboticist to fix the red overlay they get treated to for the rest of the round. I don't know if I've ever seen rampant brand intelligence add something in the way other events can. Carp migrations and spider outbreaks stimulate some kind of interaction, the blob pulls engineering into the mix with an emitter, and so on. RBI doesn't really do anything other than irritate you and make you PDA an engineer for minor busywork.

Wizard is absolute anathema to a high roleplay environment. It boggles my mind that the lore writers and staff team as a whole here have gone to such lengths to craft such a high-quality roleplay environment and maintain its integrity over all these years, only to let it regularly get dumped on by the clown fiesta that is wizard. I don't even really care that it's low-impact on its own; to me, any round type that has wizard in it is just straight up worse off for it. There is nothing immersive about Mungo the Magnificient materialising on the station at 12:15 to grab the spare and then cast STAUN EI and whatever the EMP blast spell is over and over and over for the next two hours. It's just a pain in the ass. Every other game mode I can think of at least has some justification to fit into the lore -- even ninja, which is a close second to wizard in terms of how bad the gameplay is -- but wizard provides nothing either to those looking to click on things until they die (just one antagonist, albeit an obnoxious one) or to those looking for a good story.

I have had my disagreements with Robotic in the past, but having played with them and seen them play in a fair few rounds on Aurora -- both as their consular Nguyen and their warden Palmero -- I can easily give them a +1. I can only second the above poster in that their consular got me very interested in Gadpathur.

BYOND Key: Omicega Character names: Alicia Parker -- Security Guard Sophie Harper -- Atmospheric Technician Ly Thi Hanh -- Paramedic Junko Tsutsumi -- Forensic Technician Nikarete Komnenoi -- Detective Species you are applying to play: IPC What color do you plan on making your first alien character? I feel like this question is mostly meant to crop up for Skrell or Unathi whitelists. I'm planning on making a shell, though. Have you read our lore section's page on this species? I have, and I feel as if I have a good overview of them. 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? Long story short -- I really liked playing synthetic on CM-SS13. I've held the whitelist there for years now and would consider myself one of the more prolific players of the role. It's never been a 'flavour of the month' thing for me; the unique design of Alien universe style synthetics is just something I really vibe with. Aurora having shell IPCs allows me to get something that at least approaches that style of character and gameplay in a higher roleplay environment overall, and I'd really like to explore the same general themes of synthetic 'life' as opposed to organic life here rather than just as an often-overlooked backdrop to a humans-versus-aliens team deathmatch game. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a human. There are any number of things that you could put here -- an IPC can be a literal slave in the Aurora setting in a way that no playable human can really be, for instance. The main one as I see it, though, is definitely their societal and legal status. Every organic from a human to a Skrell to a Vaurca is covered under a different set of laws and societal norms to even a free IPC -- the distinction drawn in the Corporate Regulations between murder and automacide is a great example of this. The potential for IC debate, disagreement, and discussion about what constitutes 'life' is another concept I would love to get to grips with in more detail. I like the idea that IPCs come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of capability -- from a distinctly robotic and cyborg-esque industrial or security chassis; to a more middle-of-the-road IPC that is able to emulate emotions to some degree without being able to genuinely experience them; to a fully-realised free and unbound shell IPC capable of enough emotiveness and self-awareness to hold belief and faith in the Trinary Perfection. Basically, there are so many differences that it's difficult to get through them all in any reasonable length of time, and it depends massively on which kind of IPC someone is looking to play. I'm definitely leaning more towards a middle-of-the-road shell IPC that straddles the line between designed to be human-facing while maintaining a distinctly robotic and artificial 'offness' about them, so aspects of IPC roleplay that play into that would be a big factor. Character Name: Esprit Please provide a short backstory for this character: Esprit is the public-facing name given to a NanoTrasen shell IPC previously assigned to security detail at the Nouvelle Java -- a high-end club and cocktail bar high in the skies of Cytherean Venus, close to the edge of the planet's atmosphere. The model marries a higher-than-average level of personality imitation to an effective and robust suite of policing and enforcement protocols and heuristics, aiming to strike a balance between a pleasing customer-facing exterior capable of upholding corporate professionalism and holding superficial conversation with the unerring reliability of a synthetic not easily deterred by rowdy patrons or less agreeable clientele attempting to gain entry. The Nouvelle Java made use of Esprit and several of its companion units for four years before the aerostat as a whole found itself purchased by Idris Incorporated; the interstellar banking concern continuing to reinforce its grip on the tourism and service industry so close to the heart of Sol. While the Nouvelle Java itself formed part of the package deal, the banking conglomerate expressed no interest in the NanoTrasen IPCs nominally tied to the property. Only Idris service units could properly staff an Idris facility to the company's exigent standards, in their own words; and so Esprit and its companion units found themselves packaged back off to NanoTrasen themselves, surplus to requirements. It didn't take long for the positronic to find a new line of work, however. Its existing programming and capabilities were already well in line with standard NanoTrasen corporate policing -- the unit was already well-acquainted with the concept of low-gravity and zero-gravity operations, for one, given the Nouvelle Java's position so high in the Venusian exosphere. The unit's previous blend of corporate professionalism and superficial personableness made it even more of an ideal choice for a melting-pot environment where it could better represent NanoTrasen's public image, and Esprit soon found itself assigned to the internal security detail aboard the NSS Aurora in line with this assessment. As a corporate environment full of a multitude of different species, cultures, and competing corporate subcontractors to NanoTrasen itself, it is hoped that the newly-updated and lightly-refurbished Esprit will meet with the company's expectations and perform to the same standards as it did during its four years high above Venus. What do you like about this character? She was fun to write for. I had a couple of concepts in mind for a security character based around the same vague concept of a repurposed and/or reassigned shell designed more for a customer-facing environment than out-and-out beat-the-criminal-with-a-stick law enforcement, but it took a bit of thinking through and running some ideas around various people to figure out a nice way to slot it into the existing lore. Characters from either level of Venus are not something I see played a lot in game, personally speaking, and I hope to represent the region and its lore a bit more by means of her in-game accent and character development. In addition to that, walking a fine line between a clinically robotic tone and an upper-class, often obsequiously polite Cytherean attitude is something I really can see being fun about her; I like the idea that she is deliberately designed to not seem too human so as not to disquiet people. In effect, I want to play up the concept that she straddles the boundary between being a polite and efficient "not robotic" member of corporate staff ready to assist and smooth along a workday while also exhibiting a very obvious "robotic" level of rigid professionalism and deliberate lack of more nuanced emotion so as to make her co-workers acutely aware that she is, in fact, meant to clearly be an IPC and not a more sophisticated shell trying to pretend otherwise. How would you rate your role-playing ability? I've been around, both on SS13 and on other games with roleplaying scenes. I think I could stand to emote a lot more -- there are some roleplayers here and elsewhere that still manage to blow my mind in terms of the inventiveness and overall quality of their roleplay as well as the speed with which they can come up with it. I don't want to put a number out of ten on what I think my ability is, but I've been roleplaying for upwards of a decade now and feel as if I have a pretty good grasp on building and playing new characters as a whole. Notes: As with my other race whitelist app, I tried very hard not to play wiki regurgitation here, and to give more of a background to Esprit rather than fleshing out her potentially limited potential for really deep personality. I like the idea that a character is what you make of it; I think it's possible to play an extremely memorable and engaging character without needing a whole plethora of unique and specific quirks and elements of depth to them. A lot of my characters have tended to be basically 'everyday' people working everyday jobs, and I'd like to double down on that by playing a character like this. I've been playing synthetic on CM for well over two years now and while this character differs massively from the character I play(ed) over there in a whole ton of ways, I see a lot of similarities in the way I enjoyed portraying an almost-human robot over there and the way I could see myself enjoying it here too. As a side note, I am aware that I only just pushed through a whitelist for Skrell. I know this might be a bit soon to put in a second whitelist application for a separate race, but I've always been something of an altaholic and I enjoy creating new characters even if most of the ones I've mashed out in the Aurora character creator never actually made it into the game. I'd like to stress here and now that I'm not really looking to play whitelist poker and collect a full house; both Skrell and IPCs were races I had a lot of interest in going into Aurora from other SS13 contexts, and I hope that the lack of time between these two applications won't be a sticking point. It was basically a fifty-fifty as to which one I was looking to get invested in first, in other words.

BYOND Key: Omicega Character names: Alicia Parker -- Security Guard Sophie Harper -- Atmospheric Technician Ly Thi Hanh -- Paramedic Junko Tsutsumi -- Forensic Technician Species you are applying to play: Skrell What color do you plan on making your first alien character? Somewhere between a kind of minty teal and a watery light blue. The colour on display on their wiki page is a very neat sort of aqua and it's extremely tempting. Have you read our lore section's page on this species? I have. There are a lot of them, and I was tabbing around most or all of them while writing this. 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? I enjoyed playing Skrell a lot on Baystation due to the alternate avenues for roleplay the race offered, and have been interested in them ever since I first poked my head into Aurora just over a year ago. The fact that Aurora backs up an equally interesting lore background for the species with more prevalent (read: actually present, because Bay pretty much had nothing) mechanics for them in the game itself is enough for me to want to try my hand at them. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a human. Skrell have several differences which look like they'd be interesting to roleplay out. For one, their lack of ability to express more obvious or overt emotions on their face demands a different approach to conventional /me emotes -- they lend themselves more to aural methods of expression rather than the more simple 'smiles' or 'frowns' or whatever. Their general personae seems to lend itself to a lightly condescending or patronising attitude towards humanity in general; for a species that mastered space flight while humanity was still working on fully exploring its homeworld, I can see even well-meaning Skrell having some difficulty in not talking down to their human allies from time to time. Their lack of any real apprehension regarding humanity's continued use of artificial intelligences is like a broader example of this -- the dismissive attitude with which the Federation treats them, despite the Glorsh-Omega incident, seems to sum up the species' perception of humanity as a promising yet still developing species. I would like to reflect this general demeanour in my character's roleplay, at least with the initial concept. Lastly, the in-game mechanics tied to the Srom seem like they could offer some very interesting roleplay in their own right, although I can see them being rather niche and nowhere near applicable to each individual round. Character Name: Liishuuu Xilzi Please provide a short backstory for this character: A younger and more junior member of the JFESF's basic forces, Xilzi is an energised and highly motivated individual only a few years fresh from their schooling. Despite having barely taken the first step of their military career, Xilzi harbours an intense hunger to rise among the ranks and make the most of their in-the-field training and personal development. To this end, they volunteered almost immediately for a government-run 'exchange' program with the megacorporation NanoTrasen, seeing it as an invaluable opportunity to deepen their limited understanding of alien society and add yet another facet of real-world, real-life experience onto their portfolio -- something they expect will help further their career more than the equivalent years of theoretical xenosociological study ever could. Born to a smaller Quya of only three members, Xilzi found more opportunity for individual and unregulated personal development than was typical for a young Skrell. As such, the young Xilzi was markedly more reserved and withdrawn than their counterparts, although they never diverged far enough from the ideal model of an up-and-coming member of Jargon society to raise undue alarm. Their fascination with all things military developed from a similarly early age -- and while at first Xilzi's Quya attempted to steer them gently away towards a more directly scientific and academic line of education and personal development, as the years passed it became clear that they could not be dissuaded from their fixation with battle doctrine, clinical military precision, and the application of cutting-edge weapons and defence technology all across the Federation. With their contract as part of the security team on the NSS Aurora being Xilzi's first experience outside Federation space, they are still somewhat unused to the practical realities of living among humanity -- though this is not for lack of study. They have taken Federation ideology on board as well as any model Skrell should or does, having absorbed it almost passively in tandem with their continued pursuit of progressing through a JFESF career upon their return to Skrellian space and Jargon society as a whole. Despite being only thirty-four -- young for a Skrell outside Federation space -- their allegiance to the Federation itself has been ingrained even more deeply through the basic training programmes of the JFESF itself, and while they imagine themselves prepared to have their worldview and beliefs challenged by the various species and cultures that frequent Tau Ceti, only time will tell how well their conviction will hold up. What do you like about this character? I like the idea that Xilzi will have ample opportunity to develop their character through exposure to others on the Aurora. This is the kind of character-building I've always tended to prefer; starting with a concrete ideal that boils down to being a blanker sort of slate and allowing them to become more fleshed-out over time through interacting with others, and I think it works well for a Skrell in particular due to the sharp contrast between the Federation's mandated conformity and the looser, freer, and more radical (by Skrellian standards) nature of human society. I think there is a lot of potential for organic growth for them, and I think it should be fun to play out. How would you rate your role-playing ability? I've been around, both on SS13 and on other games with roleplaying scenes. I think I could stand to emote a lot more -- there are some roleplayers here and elsewhere that still manage to blow my mind in terms of the inventiveness and overall quality of their roleplay as well as the speed with which they can come up with it. I don't want to put a number out of ten on what I think my ability is, but I've been roleplaying for upwards of a decade now and feel as if I have a pretty good grasp on building and playing new characters as a whole. Notes: I tried not to regurgitate the wiki too much and sprinkle too many "Skrellian words" throughout the backstory and so forth in lieu of actually writing something I hoped would be more interesting. Trying to write a character that seems believable and grounded enough in a broad sense took priority for me over obsessing over every little detail at this stage. I'm still expecting a few questions because I don't think I was particularly daring or took too many risks regarding Xilzi's characterisation or backstory, to the point of maybe being too vague in a few areas or overemphasising the 'short' in 'short backstory'. I don't have a lot of experience interacting with Aurora Skrell on my existing characters, though, and I was very conscious of trying not to accidentally inject or import too much residual Bay lore still floating around my brain into this application. I am not sure if the backstory fits entirely with the concept of the Skrellian military and the JFESF, but I'm looking forward to feedback of any sort. Also, I hate the way the forum here handles line breaks and how it managed to fuck up my pasting it over from Notepad -- I tried for a while to make it look neat in terms of spacing but I'm done struggling to make it much prettier.

offensive social coding Never did I ever expect to read something like this said entirely without irony. Taking offense at pixel cigarettes is, frankly, ridiculous, and I don't know if having one (1) other person who allegedly thinks the same as you is enough to make it rational or reasonable. I don't see why you need mechanics to back up simply roleplaying disliking nearby smokers or smoking in the workplace. You don't need game mechanics to tell you that having someone next to you smoke is disgusting -- you just, you know, act like it. Is all the complaint in the OP about brand bloat just a strawman for some deeper agenda involving being upset about the portrayal of smoking in a 2D pixel space game, or something? Your argument seems to have turned off onto a completely different track somewhere down the line.

Aren't you the guy who stalked one-- or was it two? -- people on CM really hard because you thought they were girls in real life? Somehow it doesn't surprise me that you'd be unstable in general and otherwise thoroughly unsuited for a mod position.

Hello, As a certified CM addict, I only barely play here on Aurora but I take credit for bringing Wildkins here. I've known him for a long time now (since 2013? 2014) and he's always been nothing short of enthusiastic and personable when he gets involved in something. The poor guy is highRP as heck but barely even plays, as far as I know, because he's so busy staying up until 6am or something chasing bugs that he doesn't have time. Either that or he genuinely enjoys it, which is frankly frightening. Anyway, I don't think my vouch counts for jack but I feel at least a bit compelled to say that he's a bright spark with an obvious flair for coding, and you'd be mad to deny him. just don't ask him to code anything specific he won't do it even for his old friends