Kintsugi

I, for one, do not care about the color change. I don't see why it's a big deal when NT as it is doesn't really have a color scheme, per se. With every uniform on station being a NanoTrasen uniform, colors have been inconsistent. People associate NT with gold and blue, but that's hardly something you see beyond command and such. NT in general is extremely flavorless and a consistent color scheme that is relatively unique is a step in the right direction. It's the sprites that need work, not necessarily the colors. I suppose they could stand to be less pink and more scarlet, however.

Starting from top left, going clockwise: 1. This outfit looks fine. I'm not too huge on the bandana, though. 2. Flat overall, the hat looks kinda goofy. Could use some touchups and additional detail. 3. This outfit looks good. 4. Again, flat (extremely so on the back), and the hat looks goofy. Could use more shading overall. 5. Ditto #4. I like the concept for this outfit, but it's very flat, especially on the back (no shading at all). 6. This outfit's very generic. It is essentially just the loadout suit and tie in a locked color scheme. Bridge looks pretty cool.

The first interaction I had with Jackboot was when I was a new player on Aurora. There was a discussion regarding Scarabs in the lore channel. Jackboot mentioned their policy of banning specific nationalities for additions to Scarab lore, on the grounds that they wished to give more of a focus to nationalities that they felt were underrepresented in the lore. While they were in their right to do this as loremaster, I felt that if someone wanted to add something, it was arbitrary and unnecessary to blacklist specific backgrounds for a scarab ship. In response, Jackboot asked if I was an "identitarian" (a far-right political ideology focused predominantly around ethno-and-white-nationalism), and then said this: Let me be clear: This interaction was of the server's loremaster calling a new player a neo-nazi who believed in "white genocide" for no reason other than that player disagreeing with their lore policy. The fact that he didn't get in trouble for this can be attributed to the fact I didn't make a staff complaint more than anything else. This behavior was and still is utterly unacceptable and if it happened on Aurora today, I would be outraged. If you look up this conversation, you will notice my messages have been deleted. This is because this exchange rattled me so strongly (I had only begun playing Aurora, and he was the server's loremaster) that I deleted everything in a panic afterwards. The conversation is still there, however, and hopefully some of the other people involved can corroborate my claims that I really didn't say anything to warrant such a hostile and outrageous accusation. This is just one example of Jackboot flying off the handle when confronted with the slightest degree of criticism or disagreement. I remember one time when Jackboot asked a player if they had DM'd anyone gay porn recently, in response to a light-hearted comment about Jackboot "coping". This conversation still exists and you can look it up, but I wasn't really involved. Aside from the outright toxicity that Jackboot brings to the table (And I do not think that has changed at all), I think their approach to the lore and the quality of their writing is substandard. Aside from appearing to be very close-minded and backwards-thinking to me, Jackboot's tenure as loremaster brought many questionable things to the table. For example, I believe the low-quality "catified" art present on the wiki was added by Jackboot (If not, my apologies. The wiki makes it difficult to confirm this, as they were long-since deleted and the pages themselves are difficult to navigate when it comes to the page history.) For example, we at one point had a catified depiction of Friedrich Paulus' surrender at Stalingrad on the wiki, and a VDV soldier drawn as a cat wearing cat-paw shaped badges and medals. This stuff severely detracted from the perceived quality of Taj lore, imo. Personally, when I saw it, it turned me off the species and indeed, the lore of the server in general. It is hard to provide many specific examples of their work, because much of it has since been removed due to quality concerns - however, looking back at articles in the bugle and similar IC news sources, you can see what I mean. Again, I apologize for not being able to provide too much personal experience on this front. Jackboot was removed from the lore team not too soon after I began playing Aurora, first as loremaster and then as a dev. At the present, while Jackboot tends to more carefully moderate what they say, I do not think fundamentally they have changed. Instead, I feel like they engage in bad-faith arguments and incredibly stubborn defenses of their viewpoints to try and wear down the people that disagree with them, instead of outright shouting or insulting them down. As Desven points out, they have a tendency to engage in long-winded debates that ultimately go nowhere, and choose very odd hills to die on. As an example, look at their "Is ATLAS canon?" lore question thread, or many other threads they have made since their return to Aurora. I hate to come out guns blazing like this. It feels like a harsh thing for me to do, and while I typically am happy to let bygones be bygones, I do not think I can do this with Jackboot. I don't think they've changed as a person, and I don't think the quality of their writing has improved, and I don't think they would fit on the lore team. In closing, I think it would be a major mistake letting Jackboot back on the team, and I hope, for both the community's sake and the lore's sake, they aren't.

This is completely pointless as antag players simply don't mention the Syndicate at all - as there is no rule saying that all traitors are working for the Syndicate. As it is, the Syndicate is vestigial lore that was carried over from the lore of another server, and has no place in Aurora's lore or setting. It is ignored and outright disdained by much if not most of the playerbase, and almost never comes up ingame or out of game. We are better off removing it (a mere formality, at this point) and embracing the many other more logical and more developed hostile organizations in our lore.

The shading for the uniforms shown here is really wonky. Service manager looks good but the chef is too drastic and bartender is REALLY all over the place, especially with those sleeves.

I'm going to have to reluctantly throw down the gauntlet and say that as long as Sleepy intends to play Goldman, I need to -1 this application. I'm going to essentially echo the sentiment shared by the other -1ers - Sleepy is by no means a bad roleplayer or a bad player, and on paper Goldman isn't a bad character either, but in practice his presence and actions on station are deeply frustrating. Goldman near-universally feels like a destabilizing presence that often acts in the least helpful way. This is fine for a character without any authority - but this is the captain, and the only authority higher than him isn't on station and can only be contacted by another member of command. He, not infrequently, comes off as a borderline self-antag, and if you did not know the character, you'd find yourself wondering if he WAS an antagonist or not. When you desperately need command's help or leadership and instead get someone who will do anything but help you, that stops being interesting after the first few times, and starts being infuriating. A captain that only ever undermines the station is not a good captain at all. I'm going to keep this brief and just say that I didn't realize how much I didn't want Goldman to come back until I saw him on-server. If that sounds mean, I am sorry - I am just trying to be as honest as possible. Again, I have no problem with Sleepy, only the character Sleepy plays. I think the fact they even lost their WL in the first place is unfair, but Goldman has to go, in my opinion. I am not easily discouraged from playing rounds by the characters I see on the manifest, but if there is one that will make me avoid a round, it is Goldman.

Both great ideas - I was hesitant to write too much because of length concerns, so consider what's currently present an outline and a draft as opposed to a finished product.

Actually, I'd argue the difference between the two is substantial. MRP very frequently disregards worldbuilding, canonicity, continuity, and lore - instead, the emphasis is placed on improvisational roleplay in a largely undefined and freeform setting. The emphasis on an MRP server is on freedom, with very few constraints regarding believability and behavioral expectations. Your roleplay is about playing a character and staying in-character, even if that character is very silly, and your actions include powergaming or validhunting or memery. The point is that you remain IC, regardless of how wacky the situation and scenario is. Contrast that with HRP and the distinction is extremely clear.

Frankly, a terrible idea. The fact of the matter is that labels have meaning and even if vague, they still have meaning. I don't want to completely rehash what I said last night in the #lore-general channel, so I'll just link that. https://discord.com/channels/724651070017765459/725209033883254804/906770275545280522 - my ultimate point was that the HRP has meaning and it helps define what Aurora is, which in turn attracts some people and tells other people that it likely isn't something they're going to enjoy. Here is a short list of just some of the servers on the hub that merely call themselves "roleplay servers" Now, what precisely do these servers have in common with Aurora? Very, very little. That isn't a comment as to their quality, but instead their content. In fact, "roleplay" as a label is so vague as to be pointless. You cannot easily guess as to the standards of play held on these servers, because the label is so broad that you cannot determine precisely what it means. "heavy roleplay", on the other hand, is a very specific label with a specific meaning. Most people who play SS13 will tell you that "HRP" means a server with a specific sort of standards, where the emphasis is on grounded characters and how they interact, often in a well fleshed-out world. "Roleplay" can mean anything, from erotic roleplay, to wacky improvisational comedy, to remaining in-character no matter what, regardless of the situation that's going on - even if that character is very silly and the situation is outlandish. In fact, that's what roleplay means for the above servers. The fact of the matter is that ditching the label of "heavy roleplay" will make it harder to define Aurora as a distinct community, and will make it harder for people who do not play Aurora to know if Aurora is right for them. At the end of the day, this is the simplest and most truthful rebuttal of this suggestion. Let me ask you this - why exactly do you want us to make this change in the first place? I struggle to understand the motivation behind this suggestion. The benefit is completely unclear to me, and the detriment very apparent. Calling ourselves an HRP server causes zero problems - I welcome you to point one out. The most I can guess at is that you suggest there is a "clubhouse mindset", which I assume to mean a sentiment of elitism, or gatekeeping. But that doesn't make any sense - we do not exclude players at the door. We advertise ourselves as something - people who are interested in that something will know to try Aurora, and people who are not interested in that something will probably avoid it. That isn't gatekeeping - that is personal preference. In fact, having a distinct label with a distinct meaning will do a lot more to draw players to Aurora than it will to exclude them. I know that at the very least the fact Aurora called itself an HRP server drew me in, and it will have drawn in countless others.

Part of the thing is that length is a concern here. The subsidiaries for the PMCG are bound by their length - as such, I don't think it's viable to try and expand further upon their methods and operations. The IRG is extremely diverse, in my mind. You could have very unprofessional characters and you could have professionals who want to transfer to the private sector, which is frequently more lucrative than staying in the military.

Type (e.g. Planet, Faction, System): PMCG Subsidiaries Short Description: Two subsidiaries for the PMCG, one being a Solarian policing organization, and the other being a Coalition mercenary outfit. How will this be reflected on-station?: They'll be subsidiaries for the PMCG, which will be playable on the NBT. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yes. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways that you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team? Yes. Long Description: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-kPCGRog_dC_KtrG_8PaT0D5hwZSoWBuDIX8ureHN10/edit?usp=sharing

Again, not true. The people breaking into the bunker were heavily armed (I had a machine pistol with a spare magazine, alongside a pistol in a holster, another person with me had an SMG, and the last person had a bolt action rifle with a pistol as a sidearm.), all wearing voidsuits (I was wearing a freelancer voidsuit, which has good armor values), and all three of us knew exactly what we were getting into. We were breaking into the suspected base of operations of the ringleader of the terror plot: it contained documents detailing his plan, which we successfully recovered, the material that he needed to conduct the terror attack, and himself. So: 1. We did have a chance to fight back and absolutely expected a fight (I was surprised when I saw nobody within the bunker defending it, personally), 2. The RP value of this interaction is based off of what was being protected in the bunker, and this interaction would have furthered the plot of the event's storyline, 3. The bunker was quite literally THE key to the story (one of many, really, but I would say it was one of the more consequential ones). If the people who had realized what was contained within died, or missed the documents, or did not discover the bunker altogether, the event and the post-event story would have changed completely. For example, the details of the terror plot would not have been discovered, the terror plot would not have been prevented, and the true story of Bayonet Hand would have never been discovered. The only other time the chemical warfare stuff was going to be used was when the ringleader attacked the heavily armed FIB team, to my knowledge. So this claim is incorrect on all counts. I would say some of the claims being made in this thread need to be double-checked, because so far it seems like a lot of what's being said is simply not true.

Sorry if this is peanut gallerying, but as the person who both 1. broke into the suit section leading to the outpost and 2. mentioned the airlock that lead to the outpost long after it had been forgotten, and lead people back to it, therefore discovering the outpost, I had not paid attention to any event of the arc up until this point, so this is not true.

I hadn't really paid attention to the arc until the last event. This is mostly because I haven't been too much on the server recently, for the most part. The last event, however, I did play, and it was fantastic. The story of Bayonet Hand unraveling and their true motivations coming to the surface was great - the fact that it was truly not railroaded was outstanding. I participated in one of the roaming groups of people trying to put a stop to him and the many clues and key details found along the way was really fantastic storytelling - every little piece falling into place, narrowly escaping being avoided. There was multiple times where we hit a dead end, only to realize something that we missed: in my case, this was the satellite station. All around, a lot of fun and a great experience imo - even if you missed out on the story, trying to stay alive in the casino was a lot of fun.

Big fan of all of the changes outlined here, though I would like to second this and request HoS be renamed to CoS. As for "bridge crew" as a name, this feels off. I would recommend "Bridge Technician" or something similarly technical.

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.