Menroka

Do we want some functionality to save drafts for either replies or new topics? I feel like I often want to write on a topic, for which I dont yet have the appropriate understanding. I end up reading over what I have written and find a lot of discrepancies. I often want to work on a topic for longer than just a few hours, maybe even over several days just to sort out my thoughts and make sure what I write actually makes sense. To do this, a persistent storage system is required. Otherwise we have to start from scratch every day. Sure there are text editors, which can save drafts on local machines. You can even combine them with cloud services to share the draft over multiple devices, but it feels somewhat tedious to do so. It is raising the technical barrier without many upsides. It also forces you to leave the forums, which for me feels like leaving the gaming/community world and entering the work world. Im currently mostly on mobile, which makes this experience even worse. I think it is nice to encourage imperfect posts and posts which just capture a temporary expression or state of mind and as long as everyone acts in good faith, thats not a problem, but sometimes you want to do something more serious or just explore a train of thought and thats where this limitation can be annoying. I am excited to see your oppinions and I really hope that Im not just too blind to find the button.

+1 ill fated deserves the whitelist. High level of roleplay, nicely fleshed out characters.

The month is over. The animation has improved, but I still feel like it could be better and needs to be toned down further. I still would rather have no animation than this one. Some more oppinions after the changes would be nice.

I agree with the suggestion. The visual noise is way too high. Yes, your cortex can tune this out, but your amygdala won't. Some may even find pleasure in the animation, but it still is a constant stream of input, which is especially bad if it comes from the periphery of your vision. I could go into more detail on why this is bad for you if needed, but maybe the argument of alienating new players is good enough. I dont know whether a full revert is needed, but it definitely has to change drastically. No "fast" changes of brightness and contrast please. Having the animation increase in size is also kinda bad, because that indicates changes in distance to your brain. Things jumping at you will stress you out, even if you feel like you can ignore it.

I believe this is one of the fundamental problems the server is facing, so I will also lay out some thoughts in the hopes of inspiring someone smarter than me. Competitive people will seek competition. On some servers its crew vs antags or marines vs xenos. Where do you find competition on Aurora? For sec officers it might still be crew vs antag, but I dont play that department, so I can't really comment on that situation. In medical and engineering, you only deal with the aftermath of the antags actions. So the analogy of validhunting the broken window is actually pretty fitting. Besides competition, there is also the element of boredom and conscientiousness. The higher you are in conscientiousness, the more agonizing the feeling of boredom is. Making a conscientious character is even encouraged by the setting, since everyone who is unfit for duty will quickly be booted. How do you align a highly conscientiousness character with the slow pace of HRP? Thats difficult and I sadly dont have a complete answer. From an idealistic and unrealistic viewpoint, the way this is solved by creative people in the real world is through innovation and creative problem solving. Making up these 'ready for anything' routines is actually an implementation of innovation. We face a problem in one round and try to understand what we could have done better to achieve a better outcome. Thats how innovation works, but I'm not saying that implementation is a good solution. Presenting problems to all of the departments, which constantly require this creative problem solving is an impossible task, which we have put on the shoulders of antags and later it will be the storyteller, who is faced with the same problem. Typically restrictions are what breeds creativity, but I dont know how to implement that in a fun way. Just applying a randomized removal of stuff seems to fall a little bit flat. So how do we deal with the conflict of boredom and conscientiousness/industriousness? Authority is one solution. A conscientious character will be happy to follow the orders of a CE, even if they are boring. The optimal outcome would be to apply that consciencious effort in a manner which stimulates RP, but how to achieve that in a generalized manner is unclear to me.

I have spotted two things so far: First: the server room seems to be in Indra emp range now, but I don't know whether that is a good or a bad thing. Second: the airlock at TComms is usually very weakly powered and will loose power a lot while trying to cycle, which makes that take a very long time. Especially in cases of emergency, the RD being stuck in a barely functioning airlock is probably not a desirable outcome. Maybe it is enough for engineering to raise the output power of the respective SMES, maybe it would be a good idea to put a stronger power cell into the area APC by default. Ideally strong enough to make a full cycle even in case of a grid failure. That said, as a player I have only once been involved with the AI room and do not have the necessary experience to really estimate the importance of quick access, so it may be fine as is.

What I like to do is to form more personal relations by directly talking and interacting with just one other character. I think finding reasons for your character to be platonically interested in other characters is one of the main driving forces towards getting a meaningful interaction. Maybe we want to show off our character with 100 background stories and the coolest traits, but others want to be heard as well. A meaningful conversation needs all parties to listen actively. The sentiment of 'stranger danger' is evolutionary valid and will not just go away, although it is engrained to differing degrees for different characters. Some are more open, some are more judging. In my experience it takes several good interactions (in seperate rounds) before any progress towards a basis of trust can be felt. The exact number of course varies wildly depending on who you are interacting with and who you are playing. Some people just dont get along and others form a bond almost instantly. I started playing actively again for around 3 months now and I just barely get the sense, that my character is now actually part of the departmental team. Of course with the other characters swapping in and out that will probably remain a struggle for a pretty long time. Its always quite depressing to have characters you made friends with disappear into cryo and other characters, who have been on the ship for longer than you reappear in their stead.

I actually completely agree with most of what has been said here. This shouldnt be a place for OOC issues. Saying No can be very hard, but it probably is the best outcome.

Reading the clinical literature it is often stated, that the safety of the consultation room is a main priority. It is stated for example, that "[...]the earliest comments of the therapist should be oriented toward establishing safety[...]" - Nancy McWilliams 2004 p.139 In the consultation room, the patient has to be able to say freely whatever comes to their mind without the fear of retribution. Otherwise the working alliance can not be established and the therapeutic endeavor is doomed to fail. It would be really nice to say something like "It is normal to feel a little bit tense or anxious, but I can assure you this room is completely safe. Nothing that is said here will be heard by anyone except for us and I will never spill any of the knowledge acquired here into conversations outside of this room. Nothing you say here will have any impact on what happens after our session(s)." And while this would be ok from an IC perspective, I OOCly do not feel comfortable saying that and it feels like a lie, because OOC we both know it's not true. The more I get into the literature, the more I even feel guilty about bringing clients into that room and eliciting/facilitating private conversation and exploration. I already had someone come in with OOC problems and although I do hope the clinical privacy and the patient's inviolability has been preserved, I can not guarantee as such. (Yes, that person made a throwaway character for this occasion) So the suggestion would be to hide the Psychiatric Office as well as anything that is said/emoted in there from anyone who is not currently there IC. I have no idea how to this from a technical standpoint, or if this is even possible. Of course there are also server logs, but I trust the admins to only make those accessible to people, who can keep them a secret, or wouldn't dig for something like that. Maybe I am making a fool out of myself, because its spess men and I am just taking it too seriously, but this is something that is currently burdening my mind.

Reporting Personnel: Mischaeel Miller Job Title of Reporting Personnel: Psychologist Game ID: the one before ccD-cmRI Personnel Involved: Briony Dillard, head of personnel: Offender Raimund Wisniewski, Assistant: Witness Bob, Security Officer: Witness Secondary Witnesses: Kathira El-Hashem, Security Officer: processed and escorted me later Time of Incident: towards the end of the shift Real Time: 1630 6/20/21 UTC+2 Location of Incident: Security prisoner visit booth, Psychologists office Nature of Incident: [ ] - Workplace Hazard [ ] - Accident/Injury [ ] - Destruction of Property [ ] - Neglect of Duty [ ] - Harassment [ ] - Assault [x] - Misconduct [ ] - Other _____ (Place an x in the box that applies. If other, replace line and specify.) Overview of the Incident: --CONFIDENTIAL-- Leading up to this, I checked the medical records of the crew, to check for any potential needs, that I could help with. I saw, that Mr. Wisniewski was reported for things you should look up yourself, if you have access to such information. All I can say is, that I had reason to talk with him. I tried contacting him over PDA, however he did not respond. (Later I found out, his PDA was taken from him by security.) I tried to locate him using the AI, because I feared for the worst. Then I found out, that he had been incarcerated. Now I had all the more reason to talk to him as soon as possible. An arrest can be very stressful and may be too much for some, if they are already not in the best shape. So I went to the security lobby and asked to see him. I was given the opportunity 5 minutes later in the small visitor booth south of the reception. I closed the privacy shutters and our conversation began. We got along pretty well, however I can obviously not disclose the contents of our conversation. After a little while, we were interrupted by officer Bob, who under the command of Mr. Dillard was ordered to oversee our further conversation. Having anyone listen into a private conversation of Psychologist and client is a very big nono. Sadly this was not negotiable, so we were forced to quit our session. Helpless I went back to my office, to file my report. Appearently, Mr. Wisniewski made an escape shortly after and the only explanation, that the head of personnel was able to up with was me helping Mr. Wisniewski with his escape. I could not have helped him in the booth, because there is a window preventing any physical exchanges and I just went straight back to my office afterwards. Yet the head of personnel ordered my arrest and I was not released until I was on the Odin and the Odin investigation team cleared me of all charges. I am not sure, whether the head of personnel should be involved with security matters at all. [OOC]: Raimund Wisniewski was an antagonist. I have no idea, whether a report like this is appropriate, I may also just be in the wrong here. Did you report it to a Head of Staff or a superior? If so, who? If not, why?: Since the highest in command was the culprit and knew of my objections, there was no point in reporting this to anyone else. As far as I remember, there were no other command staff present at the time. Actions taken: I plead them to leave the booth, I told them about this being a breach of privacy conditions, I told them about this getting reported.

Oh wow. Thank you very much! ❤️

I think, I understand it a little bit better now. That "assist" in law 2 is pretty crucial in this manner, since it prevents any kind of interference with the crew, unless stated otherwise by someone higher in the chain of command. I think, the laws are pretty good! If cyborgification was an option, that would apply to the crew as well, making cyborgification of Assistants/Visitors/any non-crew a tempting course of action. This can even be justified under law 2, since Cyborgs have the same laws as the AI, therefore Cyborg are assisting the crew, therefore turning Assistants/Visitors/any non-crew into Cyborgs is assisting the crew. This can ofcourse be stopped by someone saying no, but it would be kind of annoying.

The only possible problem I can see are very robust antags, like changelings, because now they are protected under the "Safeguard sapient life on board" law. The AI would have to ensure, that they are captured alive, instead of killed. The AI could make an exception, when a live capture is "infeasible" and would "likely" lead to more dead sapients, however this is ambigous and will lead to problems at some point.

Yes, we can just ignore the fact, that there is a very pretty candle box, which looks fantastic and adds flavor to the game and instead use the nondescript default box. I would rather not do that, but that is the currently optimal solution. PS: I get that this is a very niche problem, which only really applies to xenobot and cargo, who can pump out significant amounts of candles and boxes, if they want to. It would just be a nice for when you want to distribute some gifts to other departments. I dont think this would really break any balance, I am just puzzled by this.

A standard Box is able to carry 8 Candles, but could also carry different items. A Candle Box is only able to carry 5 candles, while taking up the same amount of space.From a mechanical point of view, Candle Boxes are just worse. Easiest fix would be to decrease the inventory space required by a Candle Box. Changing its capacity would create spriting work, since the amount of held candles is visible on the sprite.