DanseMacabre

This may sound harsh, but - the fact of the matter is that it is necessary that we leave behind Biesel as the sole focus of the server if we wish to expand the narrative. It has been extremely constricting from the beginning, and I think as a server we have outgrown Tau Ceti as the focal point of our story. The NBT is a major transition, but nonetheless is a transition that needs to happen for the better of the server. If we really want to explore Aurora's lore and the endlessly diverse Aurora setting, that means leaving behind what has been done for more than half a decade now. The point that I'm trying to make is that while it may be uncomfortable for some to leave behind Biesel for any number of reasons, it is absolutely necessary and no compromises can be made there, in my opinion. Lmwevil is right in that we have known this was coming for years. While the definite details are still unclear, we have known all along that the NBT is a ship, and it is a ship that explores the spur at large. Even the previous and abandoned NBT idea had us leaving Tau Ceti to establish a new colony. It has always been the case that our sedentary style will be shifting to a migratory one with that in mind, and with the NBT still potentially months away, there is still plenty of time to try and come up with an idea for why a character might leave behind their life in Tau Ceti for a life aboard the NBT ship. Even if your character has no reason to willingly leave, even if they would never leave of their own accord, there are plenty of reasons that they might be forced to leave. From severe debt that comes as a result of bad luck, a need for more money, or an employer forcing them to take the journey at risk of losing their job or worse, there are many reasons why people living a happy life may be forced to leave it behind, for the time being. The fact of the matter is that, like Kyres says, there are infinite reasons why your character may leave Tau Ceti: and ultimately, you are the master of their destiny, and you can make them do whatever you want, in the end. With all that in mind, I don't think it is fair to suggest that a change in lifestyle equates halting character development. In fact, I would argue much the opposite - your character is experiencing massive changes in their very existence, and therefore should experience character development of all sorts. It may mean putting an end to a story that you enjoy - but not necessarily, as characters continue to exist even if they aren't played on server. This is the part that may sound extra harsh, but I feel it needs to be said: If a player cannot find a reason they like for their character to make the leap, or if the player doesn't want to put an end to that character's story in Tau Ceti, that is on the player, and only the player. The NBT needs to be the way it is in order to work as a setting, and that's the fact of the matter.

this is a joke

Atlas stopped being a functional party in our lore at the very beginning of 2020, so the assumption here isn't accurate. It can be assumed that he either became an independent after abandoning Atlas, or that he became involved with Human Unity. The de facto successor of Atlas is Human Unity, which is a pan-Human nationalist party which occupies a number of political positions similar to Atlas. It currently shares power in the Alliance alongside the Sol First Party, which is a populist Solarian nationalist party, and the Solarian navy. I'd say it certainly does have a lasting impact on Sol, considering it got Frost into power and therefore contributed to the collapse, but it has not been mentioned by the lore team since it became defunct, and does not need to be mentioned - it played its part and that's that.

To my knowledge, Atlas did not appear at all during the KotW arc. I am curious as to how you got this impression - would you mind pointing out where it may have appeared? Perhaps there was a passing reference to Frost's involvement in Atlas, but it was not at all an active party during KotW. Anyway, no, Atlas was not retconned. It's a defunct organization that is no longer really involved in Solarian politics. What is ambiguous is how that happened - but its canonicity is not up for debate.

Because overmap inertia doesn't stop unless you accelerate in the opposite direction, chances are we will end up flying into all sorts of hazards whenever thruster control is lost while the ship is moving. This happened a few times on Bay and it was always fun - this also makes it a real nightmare to try and recover a shuttle that has lost control while moving, which also happened a few times. All in all overmap is a great system with plenty of opportunities for sabotage.

Overmap propulsion mechanically requires everything in that screenshot. If you sabotage the propellant/run out, it's not going to work, so on and so forth. So yeah, if you run out of power you won't be able to move or stop or control the ship, if you blow up the engine nacelles or the storage tanks, etc, it'll stop working, whatever you could think of. We're just implementing Bay's version of overmap so if you want to play around with it, just test it on a Baycode test server.

If the map is essentially done, can we expect a full reveal soon, or will we continue doing teasers until the code is complete as well?

I don’t see why they should be. I’m willing to bet that very very few characters still exist that can recall the Odin killer arc, and as an arc it happened more than three years ago now. They’re very easy to miss, in fact, and I think a fair few players probably don’t know about them at all. Just seems unnecessary.

To be frank, Aurora is the first HRP server I've played where the name of the station has been the name of the server. When I played Bay it was never an issue, on the Exodus or the Torch, that the station/ship name was different from the server name. Nobody ever called it "Baystation", and I was there for a while - the same could be said for Polaris, where nobody had trouble grasping the fact it was the Northern Star/Southern Cross. Furthermore, if we do the cliche thing and go with a thematic name, like Borealis or Australis, the continuity in name scheme for ship and server is still very straight-forward. Keeping the same name for across three stations and now a ship is more confusing than changing it, imo, and presents some weird questions/confusing scenarios ICly. Where were you before the Aurora? oh, you know, the Aurora. The station though, not the ship. Oh, cool, what about before that? The original Aurora. What? Why do all these things share the same names? Can't the SCC come up with anything else? Etc. I'm firmly in the camp of changing the name. If we're changing to a ship and leaving Tau Ceti, we should change the name.

In all seriousness, I would like to second the idea that the ship should not be called the Aurora. I think it'd be nice if it had a new name.

I want to preface this by apologizing if I sound harsh at any point in writing this response. It is very clear to me that a lot of work went into this project and no matter what, diligence and passion in trying to contribute to the community should be commended. I want to make it clear that whatever I say is said from the perspective of trying to offer feedback in relation to this lore specifically fitting in with Aurora, and generally speaking is not about the quality or merit of the lore, but solely how that lore meshes with Auroralore. I will also mention that I am just a player myself and not a lore authority, so I am speaking solely from my interpretation of Auroralore and can be wrong. First, a question. Many here will not know this, but this is not the first time you've tried to get Mohranda canonized for an SS13 server. You attempted to do the same on Bay- why have you chosen to do so here, as well? Moving on. My post will likely be large, so I'm going to spoiler it for the sake of the reader. For the most part, I have fewer problems with the rest of this draft, though I may make a follow-up post. I will say that many of the themes you're going for here are already done in one way or another as far as Aurora is concerned. That's not necessarily an issue - but at the same time, Aurora's human lore has received complaints for being too much as-is. I don't follow this line of thought, but many others do: So I'll ask on their behalf - why should Mohranda be added when many concepts are already present in things like Dominia, the Scarabs, Vysoka - so on and so forth. I would also like to ask if you received any inspiration from Mandalore from Star Wars? I felt like a few themes bore some strong similarities to that. In particular the warrior/bounty hunter/mercenary culture and clan system, but other things too. Now, concerning my personal opinion, do I think that Mohranda should be added? I don't see why not, but with a number of changes - aside from what I've already mentioned. I don't see the necessity of adding another Human interstellar power. I think the current lineup is plenty, and I also think Mohranda as it is described can't really compare to Sol, the CoC, Elyra, Dominia, or Biesel. You could always buff it up substantially so it can hang with the boys, sure, but I would actually recommend attempting to make it a Coalition planet instead. The Coalition has enough autonomy for member-polities that you could do whatever you'd like. You could even make it something of a major player within the Coalition, if you want it to be more influential than just a normal planet. Anyway, hope this helped. If you have any questions or comments or anything feel free to contact me on discord. Good luck!

Can't wait fellas

Originally I wanted to send this to Haydizzle himself instead of posting it here. However, Haydizzle has me blocked on discord and does not appear to want to unblock me, and I respect his decision to do so. This is edited to a substantial degree, as the original version was a somewhat more personal and it didn't feel right posting it here unedited.

Looks good to me.

I would like to clarify that I did mention the deletions to Alb - I was very upset after I saw this complaint and didn't think about how bad it'd look on my part, I just wanted to swear off mention of the species altogether. I am nonetheless glad you saved them. You should be able to get the context of the conversations with a little work by searching what I said on those given days.

Thanks for everything you've done for Aurora, Skull, I know we'll miss you. Best of luck with your future endeavors.

I'm going to be brief because I feel this complaint is wholly without grounds, to say the very least. It is well-known that I do not like diona as a species, certainly, and I have frequently voiced this strong distaste for them. I have never, however, harassed a diona lore developer or a diona player. And neither do I condone harassment of diona lore developers or diona players. There is a massive fundamental difference between voicing disdain for a species, perhaps in a overly-harsh manner, and harassing the diona lore team or members of the diona playerbase. To be very clear, it is my understanding that you cannot harass a fictional lore entity. In fact, I do not have a problem with diona lore in general, per se - I dislike the species on the grounds of what it is fundamentally, and I do not lay responsibility for diona being the way they are at the feet of the diona lore team or their predecessors. Yes, this was a joke. Regardless of the outcome of this complaint, I think it's clearly for the best that I do not further speak of diona lore, in joking terms or serious, ever again.

This can most likely be archived as the NPT has been made official and under staff ownership

We lost a really important member of the community today.

Also going to echo Matt here. We gain nothing from cloning's continued existence in-lore, and cloning was also obnoxious ingame. I feel quite strongly that it should be retconned completely and in totality.

Seems absolutely pointless (And downright nonsensical) to me and contradicts the fact that the ship is supposed to be an SCC vessel, not some office building anyone can rent a slot on. I'd argue it actively defeats the purpose of trying to make the NBT a setting that seeks to provide greater integration and representation for our established SCC corporations. Furthermore, over time I have gradually come to feel that headcanon lore and entities is not really conducive to meaningful in-setting roleplay, and your roleplay mileage will be much better in an interaction involving actual canon entities than non-canon ones. This part of the idea in particular seems incredibly cliquey to me, and furthermore the idea of "unathi guilds" being on the NBT and involved with the SCC doesn't make any sense to me.

This, alongside your reference image alone are enough to make me uncomfortable with this application, before even incorporating the rest of what's here into the question. First off I'd like to point out that Aurora Station is a server where erotic roleplay and adult content are banned - children play on this server. Discussing your robot character's taste in pornography (thereby sexualising it) and posting a highly sexualised reference image is absolutely highly inappropriate for Aurora. Moving on from that, I'd like to point out that this application's character is, as you yourself say, not written with Aurora in mind but rather another game altogether and is wholly incompatible with our lore. The character and character description questions are supposed to gauge your ability to write a character for Aurora, ideally the first one you'll play with your new whitelist. Additionally, I don't think I've ever seen you on server, and I think it's best that most players stick around for at least a month before they try and get a species whitelist, in order to get a good understanding of the server they're playing. I really don't mean to be rude, but these few facts altogether make me question your motives for trying to play an IPC on this server, or even the sincerity of this application. There is clearly some effort here, so I'm not sure if it's outright trolling, but at the very least you demonstrate a poor understanding of what Aurora actually is and how it works. I can tell you right now that I personally suspect this application will go nowhere without a total revision.

Personally I am puzzled by the fact Himean characters in cargo are seen as such a huge problem that Hephaestus being the only option is untenable. I get that it makes it difficult to play a Himean in a way that makes sense without some changes to their personal belief system, but that’s a single use case. The overwhelming majority of rounds I do not even see a single Himean on station (It really must be one of our rarest accents), and I cannot consider the fact that Himeans may have a little trouble playing cargo to be a serious problem in the grand scheme of things.

Also regarding the subject of swapping corporations, could I point out that earlier this year an opportunity was also permanently extended to the playerbase regarding swapping? I recall an IC news report stating that SCC corporations were making it very easy to ICly swap between them. I can’t find the article now so maybe it got retconned, but the opportunity to swap definitely did exist at some point. I even personally took advantage of it.

Got to say I really disagree with the first part. Contractors kinda feel tacked-on as it is. By making it so there are NO contractors and every corporation is on equal footing, the other megacorporations feel a lot more real and grounded, while also eliminating the general feeling that NT dominates the setting - and honestly, I think having people play a corporation other than NT is a major boon, because NT is about as interesting as a saltine cracker without the salt. It's dry and boring. I personally would not mind more independent jobs, but I also think logically opening more to independents doesn't make sense and likely isn't going to happen, because the focus is supposed to be on the SCC.