Kintsugi

vote me 2020 edit: fren gang edit 2: fren gang

Can we get a pic of someone wearing the prescription eyeglasses?

Once again, I feel like this statement is inherently self-contradictory. You claim that your character is still your character, and not a mindless slave - and yet in spite of that, the character is no longer allowed to act in the way they would as that character. There is no free will, you have no choice - and in that case, how can play that character possibly not be a mindless slave? Here lies the meat of the problem - this is why this ruling is one that is opposed to roleplay. First off - this is a demand, not a request. The demand is to work with the borer regardless of how your character would normally act. If you do not go along with this, there are OOC consequences. Back to the point I was making: you are demanding the player not roleplay their character as they would naturally act. Instead, the player is required to act in a certain way in order to achieve a certain style of gameplay. Furthermore, the statements made here are at odds with Garnascus' statements. Garn specifically says that your actions MUST NOT ENDANGER the borer in your head. Garn says you MUST obey the borer in your head: Which is it? That you don't need to be a mindless slave and all that is required is that you do not rat them out immediately, or that Garnascus' original statement is the correct one? Blackmail is manipulation. Being forced to do something at gunpoint is manipulation. Having a slug in your brain forcing you to do things is mind control. You can resist the former, not the later. You are a person doing something they do not want to do in the first case - in the second, you aren't a person, you're a puppet.

I think comparing being killed, attacked, manipulated, et cetera, to being forced into being a borer host is a false dichotomy. One is something happening to your character, the other is adopting a new role within the round's narrative. The difference between being shot and being infected is great - from an OOC perspective, once you are infected, you are essentially an extension of the antagonist. This is not the case with a traitor murdering me, or a traitor forcing me to choose between death and shooting my best friend. You are complying because you are being coerced, or in the former case - you are being removed from the round to achieve a narrative goal. When the borer slips through your ear canal, there is no question of coercion - you are OOCly required to buddy up with the brain parasite. You are an antagonist. When a character is killed or coerced, they are still that character put into an unfortunate situation. When a character is infested by a borer, they are no longer that character - just as a character who is an antagonist is likely a highly modified version of that character. A more apt comparison is not one of being murdered and being infested, it is one of turning into a changeling in the middle of the round and being infested.

It is deeply discomforting to me that the official headstaff take on the issue is that “You are a toxic player if you cyro after being forced into an antagonist role” - which is what is happening. Borerhost is, in essence, an antagonist role. With regards to people, the player should never be forced to play anything that they are unwilling or uncomfortable playing. This is not a chore, it is a game. This is why job preferences exist: to give the player choice. This is why antagonist preferences exist: to allow the player to opt-in, if they so choose. You may claim that people can be made into antagonists later in round- but those still require you to consent to conversion. They are still an opt-in situation. Borer, however, completely ignores the precedent put in place by these mechanics. Borerhost is essentially an antagonist, and you can be made into one regardless of whether you want to be an antagonist or not - both at round start, and later on in the game. With that in mind, to say the player is toxic if they wish to opt out is something that sets a bad, bad precedent. I don’t mean to invoke the slippery slope fallacy, but what next? Garn said that he thinks cult should not offer you a choice to say no. Will this combination of player choice removal and OOC punishment for not wanting to take part extend to every conversion gamemode?

I think this is a terrible idea. A player should not be forced to sit through an experience they do not enjoy. You are making that happen. Where is the line drawn? Will I be banned for going to cyro when I discover the roundtype is borer?

Right now this bug is being treated as a feature, for all intents and purposes. People should not be forced to act a certain way because of a bug.

I'm going to break down the many issues I have with this announcement and with bughunt as a whole. 1. Because being a round-start borer host is not opt-in, and is instead something that is forced upon the player, there is absolutely no way around it: Because of Garnascus' feelings on the matter, you can be at round start forced to essentially be an antagonist, with no preferences enabled - because of this ruling, the player is railroaded into a specific playstyle with no alternative. 2. The second sentence is self-contradictory. Once you are forced, at round start, to be a borer host - you do not have free will. You cannot act how your character would act in this situation. Garnascus says that you are an individual free to act and think as they wish, but at the same time says you actually do NOT have free will, as you are forced to collaborate with your brain parasite - this is continued into the second sentence. 3. Garnascus claims that to act in a realistic, reasonable way is actually to be a bad player. This is me paraphrasing, mind - but he said that to play in any other way than to collaborate is to be a shitter. This is iterated much more politely in the next sentence - Garnascus is saying that to resist the brain parasite is extremely bad faith - in spite of the fact that we are expected to play sane and reasonable characters. This is in direct conflict with the rules, specifically creating and roleplaying characters. All in all, I think this ruling is perhaps one of the rulings most contrary to Aurora's goal of being a heavy roleplay server. It denies the player agency to roleplay properly - borers are currently the only conversion antagonist that you cannot resist. Even cult presents the option of "JOIN OR DIE" - borer should too. Here's my counter-proposal: 1. Make it so round-start borer hosts MUST enable borer (or more ideally, a new preference would be made for borer host) as an antagonist preference in order to be one. Do NOT force it on random players, then tell them they may not resist this infection. 2. Make it so people can resist infection if they so please. Even if it means destroying the host's brain and the borer takes over completely, the choice should be present. 3. Keep the ruling that round-start hosts must not resist their borers, IF the first stipulation is put into place. I will not claim to like bughunt. I think it is one of the worst gamemodes Aurora has, at the moment. I think cortical borers are a deeply flawed antagonist. Apologies to the people who worked on them, but that is how I feel. However, that aside, I am addressing an OOC rule, not the game mechanics themselves.

I recently had a very embarrassing situation occur, where through a combination of sheer lizardbrain muscle memory and the fact I was in the middle of typing something, I closed a vampire dominate prompt early by accident. This lead to me misinterpreting the order - I saw the name of someone I was supposed to be killing, and assumed he was the person who used the power and made me subservient. I only realized my mistake after I was informed by a staffmember that I had ignored the dominate order, and by then the original order was far more awkward to go through with. Frankly, I think it's far too easy for these things to occur - the text prompt that vampire powers give to the people they've targeted leave no information behind after you close them, and unless you ahelp or copy-paste the orders themselves, you must solely work off of memory after you close the box. To summarize: I want vamp powers to leave a message in your chatbox, too. The popup is good for getting the player's attention - but a message in your textlog will make sure you don't lose the information you're supposed to be acting on.

We should not remove innocuous things because one person makes a connection in a way that makes them uncomfortable. I, for one, am deeply uncomfortable with themes of mind control. I think cortical borers, vampires, and loyalty implants are fairly terrifying. A friend of mine is extremely arachnophobic. The giant spiders are nightmare fuel, for them - and this makes sense, considering they do such scary things as "lay eggs in living people". The Soviet Union was a genocidal, tyrannical entity. Should we remove the Soviets? The Soviet uniforms that you can wear ingame? The Tajara's dominant political faction is a pseudo-nazbol entity that decries homosexuals as subversive alien-brainwashed degenerates. Should we change the Tajara to make people more comfortable? Because I know for a fact that some people aren't fans of this.

This is really good, by the way. I'd gladly implement it for you, if the sprite is ready. The blue and yellow is much nicer than the red.

Don't act like you didn't insinuate that you suspected the spriter was a nazi. First you point out that the Necropolis is, in your opinion, exactly like the SA uniform. Then you follow up with saying that you suspect the spriter is a fan of Rhodesia - which, in this context, you're presenting as a connection between the artist and being a white supremacist.

Look. Khaki. Some are even red too. Look. Another khaki and red uniform from the Soviet Union. Isn't Necropolis from the Soviet Union, too? Huh... That's interesting..... Makes me think quite a lot.

I think you need to get yourself squared away if the 32x32 khaki sprite is making you think "The nazis are afoot on Aurorastation". This sprite is extremely innocuous and you immediately jumped out with "I bet whoever made it was a nazi and a rhodesia supporter". The fact of the matter is that you're being ridiculous - please take a moment and evaluate what is actually going on here.

I'm of the opinion that a discrete, illegal force of operators should look like that - to be frank, I hate how showy everything can be. Furthermore, the mercs looking like a group of shadowy criminal operators with no identifying marks is a good thing - it creates the dichotomy of "above the law, below the law." You have the sneaky squirrel look of the mercenaries, camouflage and and neutral solid colors, a tactical aesthetic that says "I'm here to fuck things up." - In contrast with the bright colors of the TCFL (Hideously bright, to be frank), the ERT, etc - They're the "police", the boys in blue - they're above the law, and they visually let you know they're the good guys.

I like the first part, do not like the second part. I'll make the PR myself if this gets enough support. Revolvers in space, in my opinion, are a bad trope

The year is 2461. A mere four hundred and forty one years from now. How many Human beings do you think there are? Five times as many as there are now, maybe? 50 billion is a reasonable number, I think. Most probably still live in the Solarian heartlands. How about 317 billion? In Aurora's lore, this is actually a lowball estimate. If you do the math differently and use the maximum numbers provided for every figure, there could be at least 400 billion. I'm of the opinion that the number of Humans is extremely excessive - There's so many Human beings that if you vanished a billion of them, nothing at all would change - Life would go on normally. I think the time frame provided in lore is too small for Humanity to get to this number, and that the number itself hurts us thematically - there's just too many people. Here's the breakdown, according to the wiki: Sol: 100 billion Tau Ceti: 12 billion Frontier Alliance: 100-175 billion Elyra: 17 billion Dominia: 13 billion Eridani: Rounded up to 1 billion Free Frontier: 25-50 billion Now, obviously you'd need to do more than just get rid of 90% of all people. Populations would need to shift around - People would be taken from Dominia and Elyra and Tau Ceti and be given to Sol and Eridani. The Frontier Alliance especially seems to have too many people. Sorry in advance if this is the wrong place for this.

I think we should just make it easier to die tbh.

Generally speaking I'm of the opinion that limited job-hopping within a department, while not necessarily the ideal, is reasonable - In this case, having a character that hops between detective and security officer is fine. Or detective and FTECH. Or officer and warden - but I think the limit is one other job you can reasonably perform. Going from detective to officer to warden to FTECH as the same character is inexcusable. Just as is it is okay for a cargo technician to be a miner, I think a security officer who can be a warden is perfectly within reason.

Skygazer's a good friend of mine and while I haven't interacted extensively with his current Aurora characters, I have watched them the rounds that I've observed and Hazel does not disappoint. Regardless of my own biases, I think Sky'd be a great addition to the forces of the Auroran Unathi Legion - after all, he's already doing great as a Human. I've talked server lore with him before and I can say with absolute certainty that he's very motivated and attentive to the game's world

As a sec main I give this change a 0/10 for this exact reason!

I would argue that this lets us determine who is a shitter at a glance, and act accordingly.

I don't understand why these guys would have maintenance access when security (Or most of the station, for that matter) does not - carp killing is not a strong enough justification in my mind, and in fact I think them having maintenance access will only contribute to the issue of them becoming the station's militia force. When security can't pursue bad guys into maintenance, but these guys (Armed with only lethal weapons) can? I also do not understand the relationship between this and depsec - Depsec has been presented as being merely a restructuring of the security department that does not compromise security's functionality. You must also consider that while you personally may enjoy helping supply with crates and tending to the garden - I imagine the majority of the people who would go as this role probably wouldn't do so. You must remember that while somebody COULD do something, that COULD lies outside what the core of their gameplay is: A security officer COULD help the janitor clean the hallways. A paramedic COULD help out in the kitchen. But those are not part of the core of their gameplay. Just like being a scout would be the core of the scout's gameplay.

I am of the opinion that mechanical systems that automate the flavor text and character creation process do nothing but water down the character creation process. Maybe that's just me, but it stems from my experience with such systems on Baystation and the likes. Anyway. Mandatory flavor text is a good thing IMO - Nobody is asking you to write an essay. If anything, it'd be a good anti-greytide tool. The only people I imagine are low effort enough to quit instead of writing "A young man standing at 5'10" with tan skin and an average build." would be griefers. If anything, I think forcing people to write something might stimulate them into writing more.

I absolutely, fundamentally dislike this idea. It is a radical change that has no justification for necessity - It is a buff to the station's capabilities as a force for dealing with issues - and it compromises the chain of command by throwing a new wrench into the works. People thought contractors were bad for being a nebulous rogue agent under NT's command - now you're going to have government agents aboard the station. Armed government agents. Furthermore, there is the issue of purpose: this is, like on Baystation, like on Polaris, like on wherever else - an explorer role. Now that the original proposal has (Thankfully) been abandoned, the sole niche for scouts that aren't filled by other jobs currently is being a dedicated expeditionary. Yes, they could help supply move crates. Yes, they could maintain the garden - but so can an assistant. Expeditions happen so rarely currently that to add this job is to add a job that, for 90% of rounds, will go unused. This proposal would add armed government agents that have a very niche purpose that is not applicable to how most rounds currently play out - in fact, I imagine that the scouts, if added, would end up being more like a dedicated militia that immediately supplements security's strength in a crisis/mercenary boarding than the guys you ask tag along with an expedition. EDIT: Also, let me point out that these guys start off with lethal weapons and security doesn't.