Dreamix

This will still be possible. In fact, I'd argue that the presence of corporates on the ship makes the choice have a lot more gravitas than if it were a foregone conclusion because everyone's a freelancer, since you have to actually consider who's on your crew, their reaction, convincing them, etc. Dunno. It feels like it would create some sort of a dissonance. More so for the players playing the contractors. (Since command probably won't really care to consider the 1 or 2 contractor characters in round vs 20 or 30 actual freelancer characters. And they probably won't be considering what the characters who aren't in round are thinking.) I can't find the words to describe it atm. But I mean the dissonance of like. You return to playing your Zavod character after a short break, and find out the ship has kinda betrayed and hurt Zavod. Why would your character stay on the ship that's actually and actively hurting your corporation? The answer is obviously that you OOCly like that character and want to play them on the ship, but the dissonance is still there. At some point people are going to go "yeah my character reasonably should just quit". Similar to how on Horizon there's always been (very valid) complaints of like. During the giga killer arcs like konyang, when the crew was saving the world and the ship frequently was in danger, some people were going "yeah my character wouldn't want to be here". Though it's been a long while ago so my memory is rusty. Same narrative dissonance I guess, is for the corporation that's putting these contractors on the ship. Like "the corporation needs the freelancers and the cash from contracting employees to the freelancer ship" is fine. But there is a limit to it, to maintain narrative cohesion, and I think that limit is when the freelancer ship is using these contractors to actually hurt that corporation. To summarise: I'm not saying contractors are a bad idea, I think they're really fun and cool and add good roleplay potential. But not if there's a possibility of the ship acting out against corporations. The way I see it, can't have both at the same time.

"""The supermajority of the Blood Diamond will always be freelancers, but you’ll be able to enjoy some good inter-branch tension. After all, those are corporates – those are the people that burnt the galaxy to ashes twenty years ago.""" Disclaimer: I haven't been playing for the past many months (year?) and have only very loosely been following NBT3 and what's happening on the server or in the community. Apologies if this has been answered anywhere, or if I'm reaching into stuff that wasn't figured out yet. My question is about the inclusion of corporate contractors: Why? - It feels kinda forced the way I'm reading it, to have *any* corpo presence on the ship at any cost. - They're not really liked, and corporations are very much losing their power. What does the ship and the company gain from inclusion of corporate contractors? - It feels like it would cut off very fun possibilities for contracts or story arcs. Like going against one of the remaining corporations (or corporation aligned states), hurting it, stealing from them, betraying it for another one, or doing pretty much any actually "freelancer stuff". - "Freelancer stuff" meaning stuff that may or may not be in the gray zone of law, not exactly legal but yeah, etc. Even stuff as simple as looting destroyed corpo ships' wrecks. Like I would imagine the contractors to be loyal to their corporations and report back whatever stuff the freelancer ship may do. It's like allowing foreign spies on your ship at all times, especially so if they'll be in jobs that handle sensitive stuff like the investigator. Disclaimer: I don't want to pull any weight or influence this project or anything like that. ICV Hedgemaze was just a fun project I did a long while ago. I'm not saying this project should be like ICV Hedgemaze. It's just a free thought, I guess. * In ICV Hedgemaze I opted for not including any corporate presence on the ship at all. Cause yeah, I imagined all the fun stuff that it would allow. Simple example I thought up on the spot: Align with Zavod for one event arc, to disrupt PMCG's supplies. A few months later work for PMCG. It's fine, cause it's a freelancer ship, that works for whoever pays for the job. Can't have that if there's corpo contractors on the ship cause: a) they're going to snitch, and b) the corpo will pull out the contractors when it finds out.

Decks are labeled correctly on Horizon, like every single real life boat/ship. Top deck with the bridge is highest number, with the numbers going down as you go down the decks. Residental decks would be -1, -2, etc, I guess. As for a horizon remap, I don't really see that happening realistically. Personally, I'd rather focus on odyssey now, and then NBT2 - whenever it comes up, which may be a year or two down the line, who knows. A full horizon remap would be a ton of work that would take many months, maybe even a year, of planning and making sure everyone is happy with it, just to be like "ok now we work on NBT2" when the remap finished. But, I do have my small wishlist too. And these are just my personal thoughts or preferences, and not aurora dev team's stance of what a horizon remap or NBT2 will look like. It should actually look like a ship. Not like a station with engines glued onto the back. This means a long ship (instead of wide), big fuel tanks, CIC in the center of the ship (instead of a bridge at the front), etc. My ideal is 4 decks: 1 bottom maint/engineering deck, 2 and 3 being operational decks where all the departments are, and 4 being maint/docks. No hangars, all external docks. Hangars are lame, for a lot of reasons. Maintenance tunnels shouldn't feel like an after-thought, lame and underdeveloped. And there should be plenty of maint space between and behind departments, so it can be used in department remaps or whatever. Like on horizon it's impossible to do a good medbay remap cause it's surrounded by other depts or hallways from all sides - there's no space for an expansion. Verticality and connectivity. The layout shouldn't be just one long straight hallway from front of the ship to the back. No single central area like horizon's central ring. Impossible to connect everything one central ring, so some depts will be close (medbay, security), and other depts will have to be far away (like ops). Instead there should be multiple "central" areas, like one could be engineering+operations "central" area, where both of their lobbies connect to, but also the mail room, janitor's office, public access tool storage. It should actually feel like a ship that can survive on its own for more than 1 day outside of a port. There should be plenty of storage spaces in every department, and a few big warehouses in operations, and even maybe external containers like on the freebooter ship or hedgemaze. Hydroponics should be big, kitchen's freezer as well, etc.

Generally agreed. I don't think lobby art should show drastic stuff like this. Because: Yes, in game there is bad stuff. But it's pixellated and not detailed at all. It is opt-in. You can always cryo, avoid joining high-intensity rounds, etc. And 90% of gameplay is boring corporate job stuff anyways, it's not killing and stabbing 24/7. So basically it just feels edgy. Haha murder, get it guys? SS13 so edgy. ... What does a new player think, when they first join Aurora and see lobby art of a cat getting fucking headshotted with a smile on their face? What's the first impression? Will that first impression hold up when they actually join in game, and it's just a boring old corporate ship?

Very much unrealistic to go through all the sprites to remove that one pixel If someone wants to make a super giga huge PR that changes 99999999 clothing sprites then... I'd personally be fine with that I guess?

Map being randomly picked is intentional, same thing as storyteller not being able to pick whether the scenario is canon or not. If maps are votable or whatever, it just means the most popular (and safest and most boring) option will be picked every time. Variety is good and the main strength of Odyssey (imo). Voting or picking maps means less variety.

I see no point in reworking them for horizon use. People don't really play onship antags, I don't think any kind of rework would change that. They're good as is in odyssey, and I think any future antag changes or reworks should be done with odyssey in mind instead. And odyssey currently can have scenarios like Town of Salem or etc. I've seen at least one round like that with ling.

Horizon would still be representing the strongest organization in the spur. I don't see how it would cause offships to attack Horizon more often if Horizon isn't the flagship anymore. I would be fine with that personally, but how I see it is that the general server population doesn't want that. People don't want all these cool origins (that they've been playing for a long while now) forced into boring and unpopular jobs, or otherwise limited in other ways.

# What is this This thread is just an idea, a thought experiment, something I've been thinking about for a while now and wanted to share and discuss. This is not a new-NBT proposition, I am not suggesting we switch to this setting now, and I am not trying to start a new SS13 server. This is very different from my previous thread, it's not an entirely different setting, just a change to the current one. This is something I've seen quite a few other people propose, or agree with, so I don't think it's just my own idea or opinion. # The basic idea Horizon is still a SCC ship, just not the most important flagship of the SCC. It's just a random SCC ship, same as any other in the SCC fleet. It's kinda as simple as that. # The problem I think there is a pretty big disconnect between what Horizon is supposed to be in lore, and what it is actually in game, as well as what different players are expecting it to be. Some people want to play a character that is at peak of their career in the biggest organization in the spur, after many many years of education and work experience, clearly winning in life after overcoming all of their difficulties, with this great opportunity to work on the SCC flagship. But then why is SCC hiring all these criminals and anti-corporates and other "bad" origins, why are people dying on every expedition like they're just disposable cannon fodder, why do we get bad gear or supplies sometimes, why is Horizon not really doing many important tasks and mostly just drifting between random planets? Characters like these would fit on Horizon if it was in game as it is presented in lore. Some people want to play a character on a shitty corporate ship where everything is awful and dystopic, or maybe they've just been dealt a bad hand are in big debt, or running away from the law. But that doesn't really work, cause horizon is the most important flagship, with the most experimental equipment, everything is fresh and clean, it gets the most important tasks, and should be the most prestigious place you could work on. Characters like these don't really fit on Horizon, but we just suspend our disbelief and play them anyways, cause they are fun concepts. So basically. Horizon doesn't feel like the important flagship it should be. (But maybe... it just shouldn't be the flagship?) # The solution One solution is to enforce the important flagship status harder. Ban bad origins, make it so everyone always wears proper uniforms, any kind of insubordination gets you fired, etc; but that'd be bad for a lot of reasons and the majority of players clearly wouldn't want that. So the better solution, that I propose here, is make Horizon just a SCC ship, same as any other ship in the SCC fleet, and not THE flagship. This doesn't really disqualify any character concepts, only makes it so the "bad" origins don't require any suspension of disbelief as to why they are here. And it solves a ton of other small problems that we've always just chosen to ignore. Like why are we sometimes underequipped on expeditions or in normal shifts? Doesn't make much sense if we're the most important flagship, but it's fine if we're just a random ship (more important vessels get better and more gear). Why is Horizon sometimes understaffed? Same thing, it's fine if we're just a random SCC ship - the best crew is transferred to more important ships or stations. One concern with this idea that I see some people mention, is that it would mean there's no logical reason to put horizon in super important lore events. But I very much disagree with that. Horizon would still be a important ship, just not THE most important flagship ever. SCC is powerful, but it still has limited resources, and the explanation of "horizon is the closest available ship capable of doing the job" would always work.

A lot of the discussion above is arguing in circles of "CCIAA bad" and "no actually CCIAA good", that is entirely off-topic to the suggestion of actually improving IRs or CCIAA. A big part of this should be put on the wiki or something, cause it's not written down anywhere. I don't see it anywhere stating that Mel and Campin are CCIAA admin liaisons. DMing random staff should never be the solution to players not being sure about some staff process, for a lot of reasons. As for transparency and oversight. I'm not proposing that CCIAA discussions should be made public, but at least the decisions and actions taken should be, written down in the IR threads for everyone to plainly see. They shouldn't be left in the old and unmaintained web-interface, requiring a command whitelist, still named "DO Actions"... I doubt half of our players even know the webinterface is a thing. I think this would greatly help with transparency, but it wouldn't require a lot of effort at all, and it wouldn't really make any staff secrets or discussions public. As for OOC ahelps, they are not public, no. But there is much more communication between player and admin/mod staff, than there is between player and CCIAA. I can ahelp at any time in the round if I'm not sure about something, and an admin or mod will answer soon. If I ahelp someone doing bad, it will be resolved in the round it happened. Or I can ask in #serious_discussion about rules, if the matter isn't happening right now in game. And if someone says "admins bad", I can look up their staff complaint where they contest that decision, and see that they're not telling the full picture and I agree with the staff ruling, as well as see their reasoning and arguments. There isn't anything like that for CCIAA/IRs, and their process is entirely opaque, and that's bad. I cannot ahelp about an IR that wasn't opened up yet, I cannot ask in #serious_discussion about something I will maybe one day be IRd about (or maybe not). And if someone does open up that IR, I will only know if that is valid a week or two later, after at least one interview. If an IR is taking a long time, I've no idea if it's a scheduling problem, or if there's 20 people to interview, or if everyone just forgot about the IR. I do not know how CCIAA operate, what do they do in the investigations they pick up, if they are a neutral party and operate without bias. I just have to blindly trust that CCIAA are doing all of this, with no way to check it.

Captain or security can give you a fine, or detain you, etc. But that "punishment" only lasts one round. You can join another round and do it again, get another fine or be detained again. There are no consequences that last more than until the end of round. IRs are supposed to handle this kind of thing, and allow consequences that last more than one round. Captain or security do not have that power. You can say it's a OOC issue at that point, and I'm not sure I personally agree, it's debatable and depends on the exact problem.

Group interviews wouldn't work for every type of IR, it was just one of the suggestions. But the idea is that, most of the interviews that I've seen, and the ones I've participated in, are just a series of questions like "did this happen", "yeah", "and what did you do", "I did that", "...". So why not cut that out? Just provide the logs or whatever, and write how your char would say what happened, or what they know. CCIAA need to check logs anyways to see if you're not lying to get someone else in trouble. If you wanted to lie or something, you'd just request a personal interview, or say "my char would actually lie about this" when asked.

Being able to see only the outcomes is exactly the opposite of transparency (well, only worse would be if the outcomes weren't posted either). Someone opens up an IR, and maybe a week later, or two weeks, or a month later, the IR is closed and the resulting actions are posted in the web interface (maybe). There's no insight into how the CCIAA have made their decisions, what arguments they have considered, who they interviewed, if they were biased towards or against someone, if they followed the IR process or rules (I don't think that's public either). The average player has no way to know any of that, and the outcomes may as well be decided by dice rolls. I know they're not just rolling dice and I trust they're doing their jobs properly, but it's the opposite to how admin/moderation staff work, and I put much more trust in admins/mods here. I also very much agree with this, and I've had this exact thought a couple times in the past. Sure, IRs punishments start out small, like a reprimand or a mandatory training course, but it's still forcing someone to waste time on interviews, and putting them in the position of uncertainty wondering just how much in trouble they really are. And if there's multiple of these IRs, it's potentially removing a character, that someone has put many hours into developing. I also agree with the other arguments listed in the thread. CCIAA are a OOC force, giving out OOC punishments, that the player is forced to pretend to engage with in a IC way. I've been in like 2 or 3 IRs, a long while ago, but they've not been a fun experience at all. Being forced to attend the interviews, and "roleplay" (which is basically just reading logs and telling what happened), knowing that I'm trouble and may lose the char (if I lie by accident or say something dumb), is not fun. The IR could maybe help develop a character arc, but the interviews are just plain stressful. I'd rather just talk to an admin about toning down my char or something. I'm sorry if these thoughts read as pretty negative about CCIAA, but like, idk, most of they do is hand out punishments to player characters. I do wish CCIAA could have more positive impact, and more roles beyond just handling IRs. ----------------- So, uh, as this is a suggestion thread, my suggestions are: Remove personal IR interviews entirely (where it's just one CCIAA/HRA agent and one player character). Maybe introduce interviews where both IR parties can talk to each other (the char that opened up the IR, and the other char that is the offender), moderated by the CCIAA/HRA agent. I think that would be fun roleplay, and would make it less about punishing someone and more about resolving issues between two characters. Make the whole process more transparent. Use the IR threads, where CCIAA would write who they interviewed, what were the conclusions from the interviews, what are the results of the IR, etc. There should be IC notes and OOC considerations. Add some meaningful functions to CCIAA/HRA that aren't about punishing characters. Out of ideas for this one atm.

This was merged. Report any issues here or on discord, please.

I like the name "Quark". I think it's fine, it sounds science-y, and the similarity to "Spark" is intentional, cause they're both small shuttles used for exploration. With naming you can never make everyone happy, but also people get used to it quickly, so it's kinda whatever. Expedition weaponry will probably be moved outside of the Intrepid, so it could be brought to either the Intrepid or Quark if anyone wants it. Dunno who will be able to use it, I don't really make these rules. But I doubt there will be any change from current rules. The hangar was unused/broken for a long time now, and currently we don't have any offship shuttles that could even use that hangar. Also the burglar shuttle can use top deck docking ports.

I think a new BC learner role would be alright. idk why the offship argument is used so much. You can do engineering or security or medical work on offships too, but yet we do have learner roles for these jobs on horizon.

Feedback for this PR: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/20127 PR description from github:

As a solution to the "it should only run on phoron" issue: I'd keep the gasses as is, say they're for cooling or as a moderator or something, and also make the drive use phoron sheets to run.

Most of these items should be added to the autolathe, instead of protolathe. Protolathe should contain stuff that requires research levels, stuff that is more "advanced" than most the basic tools or items mentioned here (like toolboxes, fire extinguishers, etc). Machinist workshop has a autolathe too, so they could print them still. But these basic items shouldn't be limited to machinist's protolathe.

Machinist is a weird role that does not fit perfectly in any department, but I think it fits the best in operations. Like the other operations jobs, they provide supplies and resources to the rest of the ship: hangar tech - supplies, gear, equipment, etc; from the warehouse and cargo shuttle mining - ores and materials machinist - mechs, hardsuits, etc Machinists do not fit well in science at all. They do not do any research or science. They don't invent new mech parts, or make experiments with them.

A security checkpoint makes zero sense in the middle of the ship, where anyone can easily just go around it. It makes sense for docks, where any visitors have to go through the checkpoint to get to the rest of horizon. It would be a security office or outpost there, replacing the janitor closet. And I see no positive gain in doing that, with the actual brig just around the corner. Security should be encouraged to go out and interact with other departments, and a security office right in the center of the ship, is going to encourage the opposite.

Initially, when I was thinking about this idea, I thought it should just be a small group of unnamed rich people who own the company and Hedgemaze, and don't really appear publicly or on the ship, which is why I have not focused on them at all, beyond just giving the company a name, The Garden. But now, I think it would be much more interesting, if the owners had names, personalities, etc. And most importantly, their own goals as to what The Garden, and Hedgemaze, should be doing. Goals that may not align with the other owners, or be conflicting. I think this could give some identity to the owners, and give them simple "baselines" to work from. Perhaps, one owner could be very pro-corporate, and wish to move the company closer to megacorporations, while another could be the opposite, and prefer independence, or even to harm megacorporations. And this could affects events or contracts, too, or offer Hedgemaze (and the players) multiple ways to complete them, with different consequences. For example, we could find some abandoned NT facility, but with some research equipment still left there. We could recover it, and give it to the nearest NT facility, to score some points with megacorporations, and make the pro-corporate owner satisfied, who could later host a party on Hedgemaze as a thank you to the crew. Or maybe we could sell that research equipment, making the anti-corporate owner more happy. Or we could take it for ourselves, but report the facility to NT still, as more of a neutral option. And this could allow the company's owners to be more personal and closer to the crew and players. They could board the ship for briefings, host parties, announce things, make appearances. Right now we do have all these CEOs, but they may as well not even know that Horizon exists. It makes little sense for them to visit Horizon or address the crew directly, cause presumably they have more important jobs to do, like running their corporations. And SCC itself, I don't think has a lot of identity itself, being a tiny group with a small number of ships, and small number of direct employees, who aren't even actually working for SCC but are loaned by the other corporations. I don't think it would necessarily become a mono-dominant employer, returning to the old station setting where it's all just NT. Or if it were to be a mono-dominant employer, I think this setting could offer something different still. You're not just working for The Garden, you're also working for yourself, and have direct stakes in the ship's survival and prosperity. I do think the different corporation choices as they are on Horizon, are very nice, and offer a lot of cool character backstory or roleplay opportunities. An Idris security officer feels very different from a PMCG mercenary, for example. But this could transfer well to an independent ship - it'd just be ex-Idris vs ex-PMCG, and the dynamics between characters wouldn't change at all. But I don't think they're used to full potential. Other than different uniforms or corporate representatives, it still kinda feels like we're working for a mono-dominant employer. We are on a SCC ship, we answer to SCC, get announcements from SCC, represent SCC, our IRs are handled by SCC staff, etc. There's very little organizational conflict between corporations that could be seen on Horizon. We don't have events where we can, let's say, pick whether to help NT or Zeng, angering the other. You did bring up potential issues that I haven't thought about, thank you. I don't want to look like I'm just saying Horizon is dumb and my idea is awesome, either. I do think an independent ship setting would be better and more interesting, but Horizon is nice too, and some of the ideas I present in this thread I think could be used to improve Horizon too.

Oh, these would be very neat, even for Horizon. Though, the idea of that Hedgemaze map in the first post, is more of a quickly made prototype - it would require A LOT of polishing and detail work to actually be playable in game.

I don't think it would be really all that of a massive change, to the point where it wouldn't be "Aurora" anymore: Most character concepts would still be valid (with the exception of non-quenless vaurca or owned IPCs). Most of Horizon characters could be transferred over with no issue (or with minor retcons). All of the event arcs that we've had so far on Horizon could've still worked with an independent ship (of course, with some changes like reducing scale, scope, and importance). All of our current lore would still be relevant and important, and none of it would have to be outright thrown away or invalidated. All the nations, factions, corporations, and SCC itself, would still exist. For me, the strength is in the people, rather than the corporate aspects of the setting. It's hard for me to describe this right now, but I feel that (outside of stuff like IRs or corporate representatives) these "corporate" aspects are very much left in the background, and only appear when relevant or convenient. This can even be seen on the wiki, where most of our lore is in planets, factions, species, and not in the corporations. And I even see people even just ignore these corporate aspects, just pick a corporation for their character based on how drippy are their uniforms, or even just ignore uniforms altogether, etc (which is fine of course, for a lot of people IRL a job is just a job and nothing more). Most of the roleplay, gameplay, character arcs, that I see on Horizon, including on extended, could happen on any ship no matter if corporate or independent. I think also that a lot of corporate-related or corporate-adjacent character concepts would transfer well to a independent ship. For example, characters can still be in debt and desperately trying to pay it off just like on a SCC ship, except that now they can also be running away from that debt, something that can only be done on a independent ship. I more meant that these "extreme" things (like piracy) could just be examples of the contracts that this independent ship could take, that Horizon could never really do (outside of maybe noncanon events or Odyssey scenarios). I didn't mean that these would be the everyday bread and butter life of its crew. Other examples of more "mundane" contracts that an independent ship could do, would be stuff like trade, cargo transport, taking in refugees or passengers, patrolling, escorting or fixing up other ships, etc. We could have some of these tasks in Odyssey or as away sites with Horizon, sure. But they would fit so much better and more naturally on a independent ship, one that isn't the most important flagship of the conglomerate.

I guess it's a bit hard for me to explain, and "camaraderie" is a bit of a vague vibes-and-feelings based concept, but the extreme events you mention I think generate "active" camaraderie, with the people you actively interacted with these events, who maybe saved you from harm, or you helped them, etc. This is how I feel at least, having played these events, they don't really generate a longer-lasting sense of "we're in this together", if that makes sense. I think an independent ship would allow for more "passive" camaraderie, a more mundane and everyday one. You are in this together with all these other crew, facing the same hardships, answering to the same leadership, and working in the same company. Your problems affect them, and their problems affect you, even if indirectly. Unlike on Horizon, where everyone gets their paycheck from different corporations, talks to different corporate liaisons, wears different uniforms, and can be reassigned out of Horizon at any time. I wrote more on this in my previous post replying to wowzewow/Wezzy. I've already touched on this in my second post in this thread: "I meant that they would be more justified to be on Hedgemaze, not that there would be no filter or limit as to how "extreme" they can be, or that more of them would be present on the ship. They would still have to be reasonable and professional enough to be hired and work here, do their jobs and support the ship, and not clash too badly with other crew. (...)". As for the question of "why would it be hard to replace crew". A small independent company just does not have all the backbone infrastructure and reach that megacorps have. If Horizon's crew somehow all collectively decided to quit, SCC could find a new crew in a day, as they don't even need to hire new people and train them specifically for this ship. They have facilities and ships all over the spur to reassign people from, people who are fully trained and proven to be capable.