Kintsugi

As the final hour begins and the end of the server draws nearer, I wanted to take the opportunity to make a thread for us to all talk about the good times, and to share the love we had for Aurora. Though only ten of us will remain here and the rest will scatter to the wind, Aurora has long been a fantastic server with a fantastic community. It breaks my heart to see the only server I played continuously for years die, and I am not sure I will have the same passion I had for Aurora for any other SS13 server. I may quit the game altogether in light of the passing of this community. Here's what I have to say about Aurora: Never forget Aurorastation. Gone but not forgotten.

this is true thanks dr.

is this real

this guy's a fucking asshole and keeps mocking me and my health problems

this is terrorism

All in all, I enjoyed the arc plenty - but I don't want to see another like it again for a long time. High-intensity combat events should be 10% at most of all of our events, and both dreary futures events have features them as around 50% of their content. I don't think high-intensity combat events are a bad thing - but they need to be used sparingly so as to not become overdone, which they can end up being very quickly. Both dreary futures arcs felt too short to me, as well - honestly, I think we shouldn't refer to them as distinct arcs. They may as well have been part of the same arc, just separated by an interregnum of some months. I also think that some of the consequences of the final arc being negated is an issue - too many people got a pass on their own deaths, in an opt-in situation. I also think we should emphasize the Horizon's performance was not as impressive as people could make it out to be. We don't need people thinking it can take on Solarian cruisers because it went up against a small one with almost no crew and almost lost (we had to sandbag ourselves because we were doing far too well). I am concerned about the IC repercussions of characters being involved in that boarding action as well - nothing wrong with that, but people need to be subtle about it, you know? Anyway. I don't think the arcs were bad. There were some mistakes here and there. But I also think an arc like this should be a once-a-year thing, max. I'm very much hoping the next arc we have focuses explicitly on exploration and intrigue instead of warring. tl;dr There can be too much of a good thing, so let's not do that - in this case, the combat. To me, Dreary Futures II was partially a showcase of ship to ship combat, which is fine - but I think we don't need another arc like this for a long time.

As Limette said, Mars isn't losing anything. It will be speaking the Coalition language to represent the Martian rejection of Solarian authority, at least with regards to my draft.

Placeholder.

Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): I would say "small" but "medium" could be applicable due to relative scale. Species: Human. Short Description: To quote my document: The long and short of it is that most of our languages are flawed with regards to their lore and implementation, and have their origins in language that were grandfathered in from Bay, a server which no longer even has those languages anymore. This aims to better round and flesh out our languages, without causing too much confusion or an excess in usable languages. I feel strongly this proposal covers all the bases, though I suspect the human lore team may desire a Dominia-specific language, which could be written easily (especially as a dialect of one of the extant languages). How will this be reflected on-station?: Human lore changes, code changes to languages such as name and syllable list, and the addition of a new language. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yes. Besides reworking most human lore languages, it also adds a new language in of itself. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Yes. Long Description: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zQYoFzhFWtJwq9a4as9wPyU0sPDulMzhi9VHE9SY0_E/edit?usp=sharing Side note: I am able to do all the relevant code work here, and I already have a syllable list ready for Con-Slavonic:

The tone of this post is vaguely sardonic/mocking so I can’t tell if this is a joke or not - but many of the ships were intentionally under geared and undersupplied for the longest time. The general consensus is that this just made them unpleasant to play, and so gradually we’ve been making them better-equipped.

he never zipped

Having personally added eight third party ships (with a ninth on the way) and five away sites, I have not had this experience and I don't think it is accurate seemingly to most people, as I have spoken to other people who have added ships and sites of their own. I simply don't think this is true. The dev team does not refuse suggestions and feedback - like I said above, I speak from personal experience in saying that they've been open to my feedback and contributions and the feedback of others. While your experience may differ, your experience is not at all universal, or seemingly even commonplace.

Not to denigrate your work, but these are character customization features - not anything that would be an asset to the lore/development team in the course of developing an arc. Which gets me back to my point: mapping can be incredibly difficult and frustrating, and the making of quality maps for arcs is very time-intensive. A lot of the mapping assets used for arcs HAS been pre-existing playerbase-made assets. So it's unfair to criticize the development team when they've already extensively made use of playerbase assets and saying they aren't being productive enough in of themselves because they think "it's too hard" when you haven't made contributions in a similar vein yourself. And it's just inaccurate to say if they called upon the community they'd never have a problem producing the maps necessary - because after eight months, only a handful of people have taken the opportunity upon themselves to try and help out. Is there anything wrong with not making those contributions? No, not at all. But there is when you are criticizing people in the manner you are, without having done so yourself. Do you want the playerbase to contribute or do you want the dev team to work on everything themselves?

Sneaky more or less hit the nail on the head here with his post, but I wanted to ask you something: Have you contributed any map assets or similar development contributions to the server, if you're so certain that the community is a wellspring of such and that it being "a lot of work" is not a problem? Especially if you're denigrating the work of the dev and admin teams.

Going back to the Aurora would be one of the worst mistakes imaginable for the server. Aurora's event arcs were constantly hamstrung by the setting itself and the stationary location meant 90% of the factions in the lore could not even be interacted with, at least not in a way that was impactful or made sense. One can claim that the Horizon is "too ambitious" for canon events, but I fail to see how this is the case at all - it takes as much work to develop a Horizon arc as it does to develop an Aurora arc - and your proposed solution is to completely undermine a development that has allowed us to actually interact with the lore at large. To be frank, the sentiment doesn't make any sense to me, and it'd actively be making the server worse to act upon it.

The idea of a vocal minority complaining about an event that hasn't even occurred yet while the playerbase doesn't even know what that event will involve except in the broadest of strokes being reason to cancel an event is outlandish. There are no sunk costs here. This paragraph consists mostly of veiled insults levelled against the lore team, oftentimes baseless ones. Summaries are written. The setting is actively being developed and explored. Just because you don't personally like the direction the server has taken doesn't mean it's going to die, and saying that it will die won't kill it - and it's extremely unfair to say that the lore team is actively working to destroy the server out of negligence or obstinate refusal to do anything productive. The community has had eight months to work on assets that could be used. The ones that have been have been used: but as it were, "asking the community" only gets you so far. Even with rudimentary guides published on the matter, very few people have taken mapping away sites and ships into their own hands. In fact, all of our ships and away sites can probably be traced to around the same half dozen people. A large portion of the ship is also dedicated to an infirmary and a security wing. Are we a hospital ship or a police vessel as a result? Proportionally engineering is the largest department. Are we a construction vessel? My ten cents? I've enjoyed the arcs and I'm looking forward to the finale. I am hoping it's a lot of fun. It would be nice to mix more away sites in here or there - the last event's away site was pretty interesting, and it'd be good to have more expedition-focused events mixed in during future arcs.

I would change the "most" in to "many" instead. I don't think it's entirely likely that the majority of the CoC member-states are lax with their citizenship granting. Otherwise, sounds good.

I'm of the opinion that technological advancement has slowed to an absolute due to the economic monopoly megacorporations hold throughout the spur.

I've always been a big fan of the concept of a ship-to-ship weapon system and haven't kept that a secret. All in all, I think it's in a very solid place. It works as it is and it is fun - the only real changes I'd make would be more types of weapon systems and for more subsystems to make it more interesting for people not playing BC. Mainly countermeasures that engineering and research would be responsible for - like I suggested to Matt, I think chaff/jamming systems that engineering would be responsible for and electronic warfare/hacking systems that science could use to disable the enemy's sensors or target lock would really spice things up. Otherwise, the only changes I think we should make are mapping ones. The exposed Horizon bridge just isn't going to work for protracted ship-to-ship combat, and I think making the current bridge into an observation area and moving the bridge itself to a centrally-located CIC would be best. That, or an auxiliary CIC in the bunker as a stopgap measure. All in all, I think we should nonetheless be careful with using the ship to ship combat system for events, and we should be sparing with ship to ship non-canon events. Hostile ships should be well-mapped - the death box approach really didn't work at all, and admins had to intervene constantly to keep it from falling apart.

I have never encountered a convincing argument for the idea that cyborgs are a necessary and beneficial component of either the gameplay loop or the roleplay setting. Cyborgs are non-characters hamstrung from meaningfully contributing to roleplay by their very nature and mechanically they just rob gameplay from extant jobs and characters by virtue of being so single-minded and tailor-made for their role. They are a grandfathered-in remnant of /tg/ and Goonstation's idea of a good mechanical concept - and we stand to lose nothing by removing them. I would be happy to see them go, and give this proposal my whole-hearted support.

I volunteered for every event instead of playing them as my ship character, so my feedback might be in a different category - but I rather liked this arc. It may not have been the most "out there" of arcs, but I think it told the story it wished to tell well and it did so in a way that had a dynamic narrative constantly being changed and influenced by the crew's actions. My only real complaints are that it felt maybe a little short, as far as arcs go, and that there was perhaps a bit too much time between individual events (I also think in retrospect using the Caravaggio's weapons to threaten the Horizon instead of individual event characters was a misstep, but a forgiveable one.). The content itself was great, however. All-in-all - a solid, well-rounded arc, that I think will be remembered fondly.

I am making one last-ditch effort to salvage the manifest. Join this discord: https://discord.gg/ZKdx7Ht27w to gain access to it.

Reporting Personnel: Iliasz Jajszczyk Job Title of Reporting Personnel: Security Officer Game ID: cjl-dLmd Personnel Involved: Iliasz Jajszczyk, Security Officer: Witness Sophie Hawkins, Captain: Offender Unknown Southern Fleet Administration Naval Lieutenant: Other Mahisa Quraishi, Security Officer: Witness, present in the port hangar bay at the time. Theo Joutsen, Engineer: Witness, present in the port hangar bay at the time. Liliya Radic, Security Officer: Witness, present in the port hangar bay at the time. Secondary Witnesses: Reed Calom, Head of Security: Secondary Witness, on duty at time of incident, would have heard security communications. Not present in hangar bay. Jesse Armstrong, Investigator: Secondary Witness, on duty at time of incident, would have heard security communications. Not present in hangar bay. Nemo Vaillancourt, Security Officer: Secondary Witness, on duty at time of incident, would have heard security communications. Not present in hangar bay. Kasimir Rrudzutaks, Bridge Crewman: Secondary Witness, present within port hangar bay at time of incident. Time of Incident: Roughly 0125 ship time, 9/2/64 Real Time: ~10PM EST, 9/2/22 Location of Incident: SCCV Horizon, deck one, port hangar bay. Nature of Incident: [X] - Workplace Hazard [ ] - Accident/Injury [ ] - Destruction of Property [X] - Neglect of Duty [ ] - Harassment [ ] - Assault [X] - Misconduct [X] - Other (Gross Negligence, Endangerment) Overview of the Incident: At roughly 0115 ship time, the ship's Captain for that shift, Sophie Hawkins, announced that an SFA officer may be coming aboard the Horizon, and that security should be present at the meeting. Another officer (Mahisa, I think? Her or Radic.) asked why they were coming aboard, and Hawkins said that it was for trading purposes. Because the SFA is a group of pirates responsible for numerous atrocities, hostile actions against the Republic of Biesel - which is the country the Horizon is registered in - and also recently killed two members of the Horizon's crew and injured many more, I said that we should arrest them if they came aboard at all. The captain said that she would not allow this and that she had given the SFA her word that they would not be harmed. We in security privately expressed skepticism about this choice, for the reasons I mentioned before. As the security team moved to the port hangar bay on deck one, I once again requested that we do not allow the SFA to board, and if they did board, that we arrest them. I pointed out that the SFA were a band of pirates who recently killed two members of the Horizon's crew as my reasoning for this, and the captain once again refused and said that they felt they made themselves very clear. The SFA officer in question did board the ship and trade with the Horizon. I'm not sure exactly, but I believe that Hawkins gave the SFA officer medical supplies in exchange for credits - 1750 or so, I think. She also inexplicably allowed the SFA officer to remain armed with a Solarian Armed Forces-specification combat energy dagger (and whatever else they could have concealed on their person, they were wearing a voidsuit and so could have had a firearm concealed upon their person very easily, or otherwise aboard their shuttle). When an officer (Radic, I think) questioned this, Hawkins replied with something along the lines of "If they defeat you three with just a dagger, you deserved to lose". Thankfully the trade was made without anybody being attacked, but as the SFA officer went to go, Hawkins said that this meeting was quite amicable or amiable (I don't remember the exact word choice on her part), and that "Iliasz wanted to have you arrested", verbatim. All officers present immediately reacted negatively to this remark, and I personally said that is a detail she should have kept to herself. As the SFA officer left, they said when they returned, they would be coming "for answers", implying a threat because of that remark. In summary: Sophie Hawkins, while acting as the Horizon's captain, allowed an armed pirate in command of a crewed naval ship belonging to a pirate organization that recently attacked the Horizon's crew, killing two Horizon crewmembers in the process (as well as killing the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer of the FSFV Caravaggio, an FSF ship hired to escort the Horizon) and injuring more, to come aboard the Horizon. She traded the Horizon's medical supplies with them in exchange for a tiny sum of credits, which were likely stolen in the first place, and afterwards explicitly told the pirate about an officer who had suggested that the pirate be arrested instead of traded with - therefore allowing the SFA to potentially target this officer. The pirate in question then made a veiled threat of retaliation against the officer (and maybe the Horizon as a whole) as a result of the Captain's remark before leaving with our medical supplies. Hawkins willingly opened up the Horizon and its crew to the risk of a pirate attack, and singled out an officer to potentially be attacked by these pirates. Submitted Evidence: Unfortunately, I have no evidence beyond eyewitness accounts. Would you like to be personally interviewed?: [X] - Yes [ ] - No Did you report it to a Head of Staff or a superior? If so, who? If not, why?: No. Due to the fact a bluespace jump and shift change was imminent, and the offender was the captain, I had no options but an IR. Actions taken: See above. Additional Notes: I think we should really make it clear to anybody working in command that the SFA are never to be interacted with or allowed aboard the Horizon, thanks.

One could sanitize wizard to the moon and back and you would still end up with gimmicks like this: And so on ad infinitum - I can only recall ONE good wizard round I had on Aurora, ever. People will point to vampire and cult as being similarly magical gamemode, but the tone of those are entirely different (Although I do think vampire should absolutely get the boot too, but that's a hill I don't want to die on). The simple fact of the matter is that wizard attracts silly, outlandish, and anti-roleplay gimmicks. It does this because of its blatantly dissonant tone with regards to our setting - as a consequence of its origin as a gamemode designed for an LRP server - and because it is an off-station antagonist, which allows people to be wackier than they would be if they were playing their normal characters. Sanitizing wizard to make it less meme-y wouldn't work. I know that because that is what technomancer is - it is wizard refluffed to be less outright Gandalf The Blue. Nonetheless, technomancer gimmicks tend to be the same as wizard ones - less goofy gimmicks occur with greater frequency, but you still have stuff like this happening with techno: The fact of the matter is that these gamemodes are bad for the server, because of what they are: Outlandish solo antagonists coming and gallivanting around with absurd powers and abilities. They are a net detriment to the server, and actively completely derail any roleplay that might occur in a round. I'm sorry that the lowpop crowd might suffer from losing a gamemode - but it is a gamemode we SHOULD lose, because it's bad for us as a server. Technomancer was a half-measure to remove a gamemode that, because of how Aurora gamemode selection and development works, is nearly impossible to remove without petitioning the host of the server directly. I personally advocated for the addition of technomancer, and I stand by that - but I also feel more strongly now than ever that we should've just removed wizard and washed our hands of it.

This is really all there is to it. Wizard is fundamentally incompatible with Aurora - technomancer was a half-measure to replace it, sharing many of the same problems. We need to do away with our hesitation to outright remove atrociously bad gamemodes, because if wizard returns? It is not going to be an improvement. It'll be more of the same nonsense dressed up in blue robes.