Dreamix

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.

I very much agree with you about Horizon - "station-on-wheels" is a good way to describe it. It doesn't look or feel like a spaceship; I could list lots and lots of reasons as to why, but I think it would be a bit off-topic here. The map of Hedgemaze that I made isn't perfect either, though, I agree as well. It's actually pretty bad if you take a closer look - super long hallways, maintenance spaces that go nowhere, pretty bad department inter-connectivity. But the point of that mapping exercise was to include the design requirements I wrote about in the opening post in the thread, like being a ship that actually looks and feels like a ship, etc; and I think I accomplished that well. If I were to try mapping this again, starting over from scratch, I'd add another deck on the bottom that's mostly just maintenance and storage spaces, and make the ship a bit more wide and a bit less long, with all departments connecting to some "central ring" like on Horizon. I touched on this on these concerns in previous posts of mine in this thread. I think the ship should be either fully independent, or fully corporate, otherwise it's like the worst of both worlds, neither being independent nor corporate. I do think everyone being independent is interesting, I think it'd help with crew cohesion with everyone being in it together, facing the same hardships and problems. Currently, we have all these corporations on Horizon (even further splintered in PMCG with all its different contractors), and sometimes it feels like a random collection of people working in the same building, rather than crew of one ship. 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 see very little conflict on megacorporate grounds, and I even see people to pick their corporation based on aesthetics of their uniforms rather what the corporation represents. I think a lot of conflict on Horizon is inter-personal, and an independent ship would only reinforce that and give it more weight. I don't think authority or stakes would be a problem, or maybe I don't understand what you mean here, but as I described in the opening post, Hedgemaze wouldn't be like, lawless. It's still part of a small company with actual leadership, it's not just the crew doing whatever they want alone on the ship. The crew are still here to earn credits, and are even paid partly with shares in the company. If they don't listen to authority or do their job well, then the crew as a whole is directly affected by that, with their wallets becoming lighter and their shares losing value, or even things actually getting dangerous if maintenance is behind or security does not want to deter pirates. If anything, I think this is less fragile than the situation on Horizon. If Horizon does its a bad job with whatever assignment it got, or pirates come to steal corporate stuff, or whatever else; then the crew is not really directly affected, except for IRs, but only affecting those to blame for letting it happen, but even that is not guaranteed. There's little reason for the average non-command crew to even care about whether Horizon does well or not - they're not even working for SCC, after all, but for Idris or Zavod or whatever.

I considered an independent ship that has megacorp crew, hired or loaned for some time, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it should be either fully independent (like Hedgemaze) or fully corporate (like Horizon), otherwise it's kinda the worst of both worlds: The ship isn't fully independent, so it can't do actually independent things like acting against megacorps or megacorp-friendly nations. Or if it does things like that, it would have to be super secret so megacorps don't find out, and it would generate very uninteresting conflict for characters and players ("I work for Orion but we're stealing from them... why shouldn't I just take the next shuttle off this ship and tell Orion?"). And the ship isn't really corporate, so there's none of these grim corporate vibes that some people like, or stuff like corporate liaisons make little sense to be on some random independent ship, and these zavodskoi officers are only "zavodskoi" by uniform and other accessories but otherwise don't really answer to zavod. I do think Hedgemaze is a cool name. I like getting creative with ship names, another one I really like is "Double Rainbow" on the SCC Scout Ship that I added a while ago. I find it a sad how "Horizon" or "Intrepid" are just like the most generic inoffensive names you could find in any random scifi work (there's actually ships with these names in Star Trek for example). There's no creativity here, and they're not even cool references cause names like these have been used a million times in different scifi works or in real life - it's just boring and uninteresting.

Indeed, on the pics there are two zlevels, bottom deck zlevel 1 being on the left, top deck zlevel 2 on the right. The top deck on the right is taken with "multiz rendering" enabled in strongdmm, where transparent turfs (like open space) show stuff on the zlevel below. So that for example, you can see the garden under the bar, in one of the biodomes. When I was listing this in that point in the main post, 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. People that are openly like "hey let's literally kill all corporates/dominians/solarians/synthetics/whatever" ideally wouldn't be hired, cause it would hurt the mission and bring crew morale and cohesion down. Almost all of these can work on Horizon already, and I don't think it causes a lot of problems coming from it. But the difference is that on Horizon, flagship of the SCC, they require a bit of suspension of disbelief as to why are they hired onto here. That suspension of disbelief is, of course, entirely reasonable and understandable, cause "realistically" SCC would only hire bieselites, solarians, eridanians, all humans and maybe some skrell, but that would be very boring and we don't want that. On an independent ship, it's not a problem, and it doesn't require any suspension of disbelief. That is a concern, yeah. But at worst, I don't think it would be too different from Horizon. Most of the conflict you list is between characters, and it would still be present on this independent ship. But here it would be more personal as in "if you scream you hate all solarians then maybe some day they'll just group up and throw you out of an airlock", and less "you'll be hit by an IR and suspended for a week". I think an equivalent of CCIAA/HRA should still exist though, cause there has to be someone to handle personnel management, hire and fire people, and process incident reports. It is an independent ship, but it's not like, lawless, outside of civilization. It can't work and complete contracts, if the crew is constantly fighting amongst each other, spending more time arguing than doing useful things. And ideally, yeah, I think there would still be conflict, just different. And a better sense of like camaraderie, of people working on the same ship, facing the same hardships, with little outside support. Something that I don't think is really present on Horizon, where people aren't even all hired by the same entity, but for different corporations, just assigned to the same ship for some time, and could be reassigned elsewhere at any time. That sounds neat and interesting, thank you for sharing.

# 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 exploration of an alternate game setting, that could exist in the Aurora universe. I am open to any discussion, critique, suggestions, etc; on the general idea, and the specifics. This is not a new-NBT proposition, I am not suggesting we switch to this setting, and I am not trying to start a new SS13 server. Of course, if the community collectively agreed this is better than the current setting, then I would help with the switch, as unlikely as that would be. # The basic idea and lore Privately-owned freelancer ship, ICV Hedgemaze. Asset of a independent small company, The Garden, funded by a group of rich people, with the simple goal of getting more rich. The Garden would not be affiliated with any megacorporation or faction, it would be independent, and the ship's crew would be paid in both cash and in shares of the company. The ship would take contracts from megacorporations, other companies big or small, nations, factions, etc; as well as do its own thing for The Garden # The ship I have been mapping this ship lately, ICV Hedgemaze. I started this, with the simple premise of "exploration ship with a more realistic-ish design", and the following design requirements: Be fully featured, having all the departments and facilities. It shouldn't be tiny like all our third party ships are, it should feel like an actual big and capable ship, just like Horizon. Be generalized enough that it can reasonably do almost anything. This includes exploration, surveying, trade, combat, salvage, etc. Lots of storage spaces and warehouses. This includes propellant/fuel too. This is so it feels and looks like it could operate independently outside of a shipyard for weeks or months. Have externally connected containers, with custom mechanics for a "cargo arm", able to move these containers around, exchange them with other ships and stations, or even drop onto planets to aid with expeditions. Have actual crew quarters for the ship's crew, instead of an abstracted away residental deck. It should support a big crew, and have enough facilities to allow living on the ship day to day. It is not finished, it is very far from being gameplay ready, and I don't really have any intention of working on it much further. The map is primarily just a quickly made prototype to experiment with ship layouts and designs, that I did just for fun in my free time. It will not be used as an away site or an odyssey mission. The map screenshots are at the end of this post. # Pros of the setting Being an independent ship, it could take contracts from anyone, and work for competitors, or even hostile factions, across the contracts it takes. It could be delivering supplies to help Fisanduh on one contract, and the next one it could be helping Dominia track down terrorists and smugglers. The next time it could be doing actual pirate work and raiding a megacorporate facility, and another time it could be providing humanitarian aid. The variety of possible contracts it could take, is endless, and it could do a ton of things that a corporate ship couldn't. And so in consequence, a ton more lore could be seen and interacted with in game, that we can't really see with Horizon. It would allow seeing our universe from different and new perspectives, being about as big of a difference as the switch from Aurora station to Horizon ship. Taking contracts could give the ship more purpose to actually existing, and make the standard round-to-round gameplay more busy and meaningful. Staff, event-runners, antags, or even just captains, could be assigning contracts and goals for Hedgemaze to complete, different every round. Currently Horizon isn't doing much outside of events, just orbiting whatever planet we are nearby, not doing anything meaningful. It would promote a better sense of like camaraderie, of people working on the same ship, facing the same hardships, with little outside support. Something that I don't think is really present on Horizon, where people aren't even all hired by the same entity, but for different corporations, just assigned to the same ship for some time, and could be reassigned elsewhere at any time. Characters could be from virtually any background. Dregs, samaritans, queenless, exileds, ex-criminals, actual criminals, anti-corporates, etc. On Horizon, flagship of the SCC, most of these "extreme" backgrounds can already be played, but they require a bit of suspension of disbelief as to why exactly are they hired onto here. But an independent ship? It needs all the crew it can get. The crew actually matters, as it can't just be replaced by any of the millions of other people that work for the megacorporations, or reassigned from thousands of their other ships or facilities. And so, The Garden has to consider the crew's well-being and wishes. Characters get much more agency, and should be able to influence the direction of Hedgemaze. Unlike on Horizon, where command feels like powerless middle managers, who can't decide on anything outside of the current shift they're on. As the crew is paid partly in company shares, they are directly hurt financially if the ship is damaged, or its cargo is stolen away. It gives a ton of weight to antag gimmicks like "EE buys the ship", where characters can't just say "eh whatever, I'll just take the next shuttle to another SCC ship". Or to any pirates or thieves, like in the solarian events, where now the crew can't just go "they're just taking SCC phoron, not mine, so why would I care". Space would feel more dangerous. Pirates won't attack a SCC ship, but an independent one? Sure. Whether there would be more ship combat is a different question, but even just sighting a potentially hostile ship would be more tense, if the possibility of getting attacked is real, and not just theoretical. So with all of the points above, I think such setting would allow for much more creativity and freedom in character creation, and it would make these characters' presence feel much more meaningful and important. # Cons of the setting Obviously, loses a lot of the corporate feels and vibes, of working for the huge megacorporations, being just a tiny cog in the machine. Although, characters could still come from megacorp backgrounds, just not be actively working for them. Loses some character backgrounds. Vaurca I think would be the most hurt, cause they have big ties to the megacorps. Queenless Vaurca would be great on Hedgemaze, however. Megacorp lore potentially loses some relevancy. It would still be useful to all the characters that used to be corporate, but now work on the Hedgemaze. But generally, I don't think any lore that we currently have would lose much importance or relevancy. All of the lore for species, nations, factions, megacorps, etc; would still be relevant and important, as Hedgemaze could interact with any number of them as it takes on contracts, and characters could use them as their backgrounds or backstories. Potentially lose some jobs: consular officer, corporate liaison. I have some ideas for keeping them, however. Consular officers could basically just be passengers who are looking out for their nation's people, but otherwise don't have any "power" over the ship. Corporate liaisons could be present on the ship when it is taking contracts from megacorporations, acting as actual liaisons between the ship and the megacorp, which actually gives them more "power" than they have currently on Horizon. # ICV Hedgemaze map The images should be below this message. They should be in high resolution and full quality, being 5600x7488 pixels. But unfortunately, at least for me, both forums and imgur do lower the quality of uploaded images. So here is a link to these on our main discord: https://discord.com/channels/157516682288562176/1162868440814600232/1270487159404494920 And uploaded onto imgur: https://i.imgur.com/GT5nPZR.jpeg and https://i.imgur.com/RPCiNIv.jpeg The map is also available to download on my github repo, if anyone wanted to open it up in strongdmm and have a look around. Here: https://github.com/DreamySkrell/Aurora.3/blob/2024-07-17--mary-in-the-hedgemaze/maps/mary_in_the_hedgemaze.dmm

Granted, I did not play the devtest for the mode, however, I am subjected to proper low-pop. On a good day, there's maybe 5-8 players on the Horizon. I do think that it should be restricted unless at least fifteen people are readied up. Odyssey missions can be virtually anything. It doesn't have to always be highpop combat, it's just the first test we had so far. I think midpop or lowpop missions definitely have a place in it as well, and we've been thinking about testing such odyssey mission at some point. Missions that do not feature any combat, or only have combat against NPCs like carp or hivebots. Missions that do not require any actors, or where actors are optional. Missions where Horizon is just told to scout out some point of interest, or do some other small task. We have some away sites that could be adapted to missions. Like the Crystal Planet Outpost that I added a long while ago, where it'd just be some abandoned outpost on some random planet, and Horizon is told to check it out, and figure out why exactly is it abandoned. Or the Abandoned Industrial Outpost, or the Blueriver Planet, or the Crashed Tanker, or other sites like that. One may ask, but why turn these away sites into missions? Do they not work perfectly fine as they are currently, being just away sites? And my answer is, currently expeditions to away sites are like, entirely optional, not even guaranteed to be nearby, do not involve a lot of crew (other than the usual xenoarchs, bridge crew). So, basically, I think lowpop/midpop Odyssey would be more like just, expanded and guided expeditions.

The idea of Odyssey is kinda, "Horizon goes to do X" instead of "X comes to Horizon" (being mercs/burglars/ninjas/etc). What "X" is exactly, can be anything. It can be a planet, a space station, a ship, anything. This planet outpost that we tested today, is just the first thing I mapped in, but odyssey missions could be basically anything, including maps without any hostile actors at all. Ideally there would be some odyssey missions optimized for highpop, and different ones for lowpop too with less/no actor requirements. So it's not just a highpop murder gamemode. Another thing still, is that the "gimmick" or "story" is up to the actors and storyteller to figure out, and could be different every round. This time it was EE scientists and independent mercenaries protecting them, and that was the volunteers gimmick - next time we run this it could be entirely different.

Other than the technical difficulties (sorry about those), I hope it was mostly a success! Being the first ever test run of odyssey, at least. A lot of the things like bugs and issues will be solved until next time. I've seen a ton of cool roleplay and action during this test, stuff that does not happen in normal rounds.

I have offered to do this a few times now. The benefits to the database being in code are like, many. Currently you can't even see cargo items without being actually in game and playing a character.

What is "mapmanip" In short, it is map manipulation, and happens before the map is actually loaded by the server. This is implemented using BAPI/RUST, instead of DM code. How map manipulations are configured and defined, is by adding a `.jsonc` file corresponding to a `.dmm` map. Currently, the only available map manipulation, is submap extraction/insertion. This guide will be updated as things are changed or added. Guide to submaps Submaps are a mechanism to allow copy-pasting parts of maps (submaps) into other maps. Mapmanip script There is a script in the repo, to very quickly run map manipulations, without launching the server and waiting for it to initialize.

Would body cams greatly mess with antag balance? Even with all these nerfs that people propose? I think, yeah. But even ignoring antag balance, I do not want to see body cams, being a sec main. I do not want to have a HoS/warden looking at my every move, including any shady stuff or roleplay that I may be trying to do. I do not want to see less communication and radio chatter, cause the HoS/warden can just look at cameras to see the situation instead.

I like stairs being dangerous. I like stairs being something more than just a decoration. What I hate though, is random stairs everywhere, where they make no sense to be. Like the machinist workshop, or the morgue, or the stairs spam on the bridge. There are many examples. I'd rather have removed a lot of these stairs that make no sense, than to revert stairs being dangerous.

I have just tested it locally, and it does not insta destroy head of a naked M'sai. No idea what ammo or exact shotgun type or whatever this is in the gif, but I tested slugs with double-barrel shotguns, sawn-off and normal. And not to mention that, yeah, M'sai are the weakest species, and gank is against the rules. We also already have a concealable double-barrel shotgun in the uplink. And since it's not really abused by people, I see no reason to not add a proper sawn-off shotgun too.

I wish instead we had more ship gun types, something in between Grauwolf and Longbow, and the Gaddie ship could have that gun. But until then, I think Longbow is fine. What I very much hate is making it so all ships just use the same gun, the grauwolf and/or francesca. They already mostly do. It's incredibly dull and boring.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/19018 PR up with tweaks and rebalance. This should fix a lot of the potential problems with the cult base, and I think it is a good change. It's still cult, it uses cult mechanics, and has some supernatural aspects. But it should not overflow outside of the cult base and take over the round and overpower other ships or horizon. And hopefully it would encourage more roleplay, and not spamming cult runes. As for it being too common still. Well. Could be fixed by mapping in more away sites, both generic and for current sector. In TC we have over twice as many third party ships (~17) than away sites (~8). If we get 3 away sites every round, that means the cult base will show up every third one.

Before I started working on this, I asked maintainers for opinion, and it was said to be ok, and that I can go through with it. The Cult Base PR was approved by one maintainer head admin/dev, and merged by another maintainer head admin/dev. If this complaint is about the Cult Base being added, it should be aimed at the maintainers who approved or merged it, or the dev team as a whole, and not specifically me. The PR was up on GitHub for about 2 months, and I was posting about it on discord, posting progress pics, and generally just mentioning it in discussions. Feedback from non-staff players was generally positive, so considering also the first and second points, I did not see the need for a feedback thread. Actually having played three rounds on it yesterday, the feedback that I've seen was generally positive, and I've seen other staff (admin and mod) play it, as well as both staff and non-staff be positive or excited about it. Could it be rebalanced? Sure. Maybe. But it needs to be played for some time first to see it in gameplay. I said both on discord and on forums, that I am willing to rebalance it, just not immediately after it's added, and not before it gets more feedback. The Cult Base being guaranteed to spawn every round was a bug/oversight, and was fixed already. It's a new thing, so it is not at all surprising that people want to check it out, and that it may be potentially disruptive for a short bit if everyone wants to play or visit it. One of the rounds that I played also had an admin enable four more cultist ghost spawns. In a week or a month from now, it's just going to be one site from many that we have, same as other sites, and struggle to get even one cultist or visitor in most rounds, and rounds with full squad of four cultists are going to be rare. The linked thread is effectively asking to remove or revert the Cult Base PR (since cult is never voted), and we don't really allow revert suggestions/PRs until at least a month or so passes, so that is why I voted to dismiss it.

To reiterate - I am not against changing or rebalancing it. I was thinking (and discussed on discord yesterday), to make the cultists spawn without cult tomes, so they could only use the few mapped in runes (conversion, teleport, sacrifice), and could not create more (so they could not make stuff like stun talismans). I think this would be fine enough. But I want it stay for a bit as is, see how it is played, and gather more feedback potentially.

The Cult Base spawning every round was already fixed. It has the same spawn weight as most other sites now, and should not appear more often than others. As for this suggestion... Making it so the Cult Base spawns only if it's cult gamemode, would effectively just revert and remove the Cult Base, as cult is literally never voted or rolled in secret. This is a salt/kneejerk suggestion after barely even one (1) day of the Cult Base being added, and there was not enough time yet to see it in gameplay to determine if it's nice or if it needs any changes.

I think machinists fit perfectly where they are, operations. Machinists don't do science or research, so they don't fit in research dept at all. They only work with already existing and mass produced designs, and don't invent or research new ones. Machinists also don't fix or improve or maintain the ship's existing systems like engineering, so they don't fit there either. What machinists mainly do, is supply other departments with gear, exosuits, hardsuits, and the like, as well as maintain borgs, AI, and IPCs. If anything it would be better as a cross-dept job of med-ops, but just ops is fine enough since we don't do cross-dept jobs.

I think this is fine. Caseless should be reserved to special unique guns that aren't in normal everyday gameplay. It's ultimately low effort to implement so it's fine if it's just for one or two guns really. It's really not going to kill the soul of aurora if caseless exists as an option for some guns. As for the rest of the doc, I feel like people read "standardization" and think "wow stop killing unique guns!!!1!". Reading through it, it sounds fine. It establishes what nations should have what weapons and calibers, and adds some cool stuff too like 64x64 gun sprites.

But why does a death have to amount to something? Why specifically deaths? Why the focus on deaths, and players of characters who have died? It was now decided we will get the memorial thingy, okay. So if my character died, they get put in the memorial, with some text about how they died, and a neat custom message. Is that meaningful? Maybe. But if my character did not die, and they were not exceptional enough to get a medal, then I sort of get nothing then? Is that fair? Not sure. Well, I guess, they get to stay alive and participate in future events and roleplay, I guess, but that's kinda close to just saying that participating in events is the "thing" you get out of them in on itself (and I think that's fine). But like, if I stop playing them anyway then I get nothing still. Or if I decide to stop their arc or kill them offscreen or whatever else. Other people are going to forget about my character in weeks if not days, no matter if they died in a event, or if I simply just lost interest and stopped playing them. I said before, I wish instead of a memorial that shows deaths, there was instead a terminal thing that showed everyone participating in the events, their roles and jobs, and not just specifically and only people who died. If the players of Aurora stop caring about events a few months after they happened, then... what does that mean for the people who did not die on them? I do think it's disrespectful and shitty to dismiss people with the whole "old lore don't care", but... Our server and its lore has been going for a long time now, so it's not really feasible to expect people to care about old events. Should we keep all the events and event arcs relevant like, forever? Like if people talk about for example Konyang for a few months and then it stops being relevant then like, that sounds good enough for me, we are going to get more event arcs in the future, new players, new characters, so it just can't be relevant and important forever, and it's natural at some point attention and focus will shift to something else.

Why was this not communicated before the vote? Why was it not communicated what people are actually voting for? Both the duties and expectations of 2ICXO, their authority, and also the species restrictions. When I voted for 2ICXO, I assumed this, over a year ago. I assumed that it would be actually 2ICXO, second-in-command. I would never imagine it would be "2IC but not actually" or "2IC but expected to promote 3IC to 1IC". I imagine a lot players did the same, or assumed that non-human non-skrell species could still be XO. Or any other assumption cause back then a lot of people were theorizing and discussing how it would look like. This should all have been communicated BEFORE the vote, so people know what they are actually voting for.

So basically, 2ICXO is... not actually second in command. This is, honestly and genuinely, bizarre to me, how such a simple idea of 2ICXO could be implemented like this. If XO has to find an acting captain and listen to that acting captain, they're not actually second in command, if the XO can't just assume command themselves. It's a weird mix of 2IC and 3IC. I would expect 2IC to actually be 2IC, and NOT be expected to appoint 3IC head of staff into a 1IC role. This overcomplicates the simple chain of command we had before. The vote was "do we want XO2IC or not". It did not mention about whether it would be restricted to human and skrell only, and I imagine a lot of people voted "we want XO2IC" under the assumption that other species could still be XO. And it did not mention all these rules that XO2IC is not actually 2IC. I am very much not happy of how this is being implemented. Not to mention how this took (almost?) a year to be implemented after the vote, which just feels like a big disappointment, to wait so long, with so many reminders and posts in the thread, being something that a lot of people were excited about, just to see this.

A thought. How about something like this (or even combined functionality), that would show everyone who participated in the events, what roles they took, if they died or not. Even could be as simple as just saving the end round crew manifest from the event to display there. Cause like even with the memorial/medals/etc, it would be a neat way to see or say "I was there", without either having to die to be put in the memorial, or having to do something super exceptional that gets you a medal or article mention. I think that would be very cool to look up the manifest from some event and be like, "oh X and Y were there, it was fun, we did Z together", or "oh I forgot John was there too, and we did the thing", or "I was there, back then, and this was my department, these were the good times...". Currently, this kind of information just is not kept or archived at all, and if you don't remember if you (or someone else) were there, there is no way to find that out. With the memorial/medals/etc, it's better, but it only works for dead or exceptional characters, and the average Joe still has no "proof" of being there at all.