rrrrrr

I feel like calling Bubble "iconic" is a bit of a stretch.

To briefly play devil's advocate for not having a 30-day limit for papers on notice boards --- disposals and paper shredders exist. Presumably, players can do their due diligence in removing outdated/irrelevant papers on departmental noticeboards and janitors can do it for public ones.

Belated reply but that looks really nice. I'm a bit hesitant to add more to really justify it, mostly because I'm not sure if the lore team considers it necessary.

BYOND key: Timby Discord Username: botanist Character names: Maja Gretzsky, LENNY How long have you been playing on Aurora? Since 2014-2015. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? Yes, several, as far as I know, all on my now-lost CKEY. I believe that I was once permanently banned after submitting a joke appeal to a week-long ban. I also had a reputation as someone who was terminally unserious. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame? For starters, the OOC purpose of everybody playing this game is (hopefully) to create an interesting and engaging story; it only stands to reason that command roles have that responsibility times ten. You can make or break rounds depending on how you respond to certain things, which gimmicks you entertain, and so on. I believe heavily in the maxim "yes, and" which comes from improvisational comedy; you should never say "no" to anything (within reason.) You should build on what other people are giving you, even if you can't directly give them what they want. Beyond that, another OOC purpose is directing your department, managing, delegating, and so on. I previously played Head of Security and Captain, so I think I still have this in my bones. I "get" it. You gotta manage. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them? I think I answered most of this question with my previous answer; your responsibility as a player, period, is to create an interesting story within the round. More broadly, to entertain one another. That's all that role- playing is. It's entertainment. Another important part is to not make yourself a problem for other people, or at least not a problem that feels unmanageable. Everybody's had a bad boss. I think that it's okay to play a Head of Staff who is, to be blunt, an asshole. The SCC is not a mom-and-pop shop where the owners know your name and your order and they smile every time you walk in through the door. It's a massive conglomerate of competing megacorporations, some of whom hate each other, all of whom have only one goal in mind: making that sweet, sweet schmoney. Explain how the recent events in the Spur changed your character and how they came to be employed on the SCCV Horizon. I'd be bring out an old, old character that I previously played as Captain back in the day, Walther Brooks --- Brooks was a Solarian who believed fully and completely in NanoTrasen's mission. (Remember when it was just NanoTrasen? Pepperidge Farms remembers!!) The only thing that mattered to him, ultimately, was making sure the (at the time) station's mission wasn't threatened; naturally, this meant making sure that any present heads of staff were taking the due diligence to actually manage their departments, checking in on ones without a head of staff, making sure no one was being brutally murdered, so on and so forth. I'm not sure if I played Brooks on any canon events (or if those even existed back then), but I'd play him as a true believer coming out of retirement due to how important he believes the Horizon's mission is. Phoron is foundational to the intergalactic economy. The Horizon's mission is to discover new sources of phoron. It's pretty straightforward... Aside from that, I'd play him as having been retired for a few years. (I didn't play for a long time.) He has a Bachelor's in Criminology, a Masters in Management, and (now) a PhD in Business Administration. He believes that work transcends species, nationality, and sex. The Solarian Collapse and Einstein Engines' resultant takeover of the Solarian market disturbed him greatly; the formation of the SCC pleased him... basically, a true-blue believer in the SCC! Other minor, dumb character details: he's Swiss, meaning that he technically has no stake in intergalactic politics. He has a long, long career with NanoTrasen and previous work experience as an elementary school teacher. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Captain. Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yes. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking: Walter Brooks, Captain Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Yes. Have you linked your BYOND account to the Forums? No. Wait. Maybe. I dunno. Extra notes: I have none.

This is great --- I highly support it (although my support doesn't mean much) and it'd pair nicely with the skill system, when that comes around. Baystation 12 does something similar with the way their engineering department works. (Curiously, they also have a "Senior Engineer" role... could be worth discussing in the future? Who knows.)

Lore Impact: My heart says "small," but my brain says "moderate." Species: Human and potentially any synthetic or skrell characters who have lived in the Sol system. Short Description: A few neat little details added to Unity Station; that is to say, changing the station's description from being a somewhat vague series of layered decks to a suitably large Gundam-style cylinder station with a population to match the political and bureaucratic class of a nation that covers multiple star systems. It also moves Unity Station from Earth orbit to Earth-Moon L5, a metaphorical "half-way" point between Earth and Luna. How will this be reflected on-station? Background fodder for Solarian consuls, diplomatic aides, bodyguards, and potentially any character actually from Unity Station. I propose an accent tag. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists? It adds minor detail to an important place. It makes the setting moderately "crunchier" by implying that realistic space colonies may exist elsewhere. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team? Yes. Long Description The "Sol" page is really great and provides wonderful run-downs of each planet in the Sol System, all of which provide wonderful fodder for writing a character. Oft have I read it and gone, "wow, Ganymede!" or "wow, the asteroid belt!" Recently, I read it and went, "wow, Unity Station!" This proposal adds a little more detail to Unity Station: what it looks like, what kind of person lives there, and why space stations are so darn cool. Hope you enjoy reading. As in my prior lore canonization app to add some details, I will be quoting directly from the wiki page and underlining my suggested additions. I've only included sentences that I've changed to, uh, not include a big block of text. [I FADE INTO A BLUE MIST AS THE WIND SWEEPS ME AWAY] Located at Earth-Moon L5, Unity Station is the seat of the Alliance’s modern government. ... Alliance architects built Unity Station as an O'Neill Cylinder, a design that, while antiquated after the invention of artificial gravity generators, had proven to be a straightforward way of housing a large number of people in a pleasant and Earth-like environment. Important governmental buildings, such as the Prime Minister's residence and the Senate, are surrounded by kilometers of residential suburbs and commercial districts. The station's docks also serve as the Interstellar War Memorial, permanently hosting the museum ship ASSNV Cincinnatus — ... Due to this design Unity Station has a permanent population of around five million, and is a member state of the Alliance which elects its own senators. This is what the proposed accent tag would look like: I understand with a (not so) heavy heart that accent tags are a bit of a hard sell, but I think they go a long way in encouraging players to explore unappreciated backgrounds. (Remember when the Orepit accent got added?) Either way, sort of an optional thing I'm throwing in. I swear I'm usually better at spriting, it's just that accent tags are hard and I mashed Earth and Luna's together and, uh, yeah, not great.

As I've already explained, this is completely serious. I'm not joking. I would be willing to do this.

I finally have access to my forum account, so I can post! For the record, this is a serious post. This is a serious suggestion. What do you all think? Which one looks better?

Just to further this line of questioning, since it's a topic near and dear to me: why should certain issues, like drug abuse, be disconnected from reality? What purpose does that serve? Alcohol's in the game; should that be removed and replaced with a more powerful, fantastical analog? (Sorry if these questions sound too harsh!)

This is absolutely amazing! The ship itself looks great; love the massive propellant tanks, love that you need to do EVA to set up thrust, love that there are huge, noticeable radiators on the sides of the ship... and the docks being on the fore? Oh man. This here is one believable space ship. Love it.

At the risk of being somewhat off-topic, I feel like this idea should be explored in a different thread... mostly because I think it's a good idea. The Horizon being the flagship seems to preclude certain things, which is sad.

Wow, that's really cool... would those go well with the current walls?

Inspired by this thread. A few ideas for random events and making it less easy to fix things in ten seconds. Keep in mind that this is a knee-jerk thread with ideas that I came up with in two minutes. I'm going to the grocery store. random events, haha - Rats chew some wires in maintenance. Ten-to-fifteen minutes later, an announcement is sent out with GPS coordinates, ala "space fungus." Wiring in a "normal" area (i.e, covered by flooring) could just "short out," I guess. This would be neat, because you could feasibly "catch it" before the announcement goes out, if you're paying attention --- substation power would start dropping... gotta go and figure out why! - A section of pipes in an area burst (be they disposal, scrubber, or air.) Much like the above idea, an announcement revealing the exact location is delayed by a few minutes... possibly a long time. Carbon dioxide build-up, garbage piling up under the floor... wow! - "Hull damage." A section of the outer hull receives mild damage. Why? I don't know. Space debris. Who knows. Go outside and fix it. making things more difficult in general make walls more time-consuming to build. not in terms of actual time but in terms of steps. make it require bolting the sheet metal onto the girder and then welding it in place. same steps for reinforced plasteel walls. autolathe supremacy this is a "dante must die" mode-level idea i.e in terms of "what if things were just more of a pain to do" but: remove the ability to just fabricate rods floor tiles and crap by hand. yes it is convenient. how are you doing that though make getting these things require an autolathe and add an autolathe to engineering. (alternatively: no lathe in engineering. either build your own or work with operations/the machinist and use theirs.) instead of walking around with your twenty-five sheets of steel you have to actually understand what the problem is before you show up in order to fix it.

I think a major part of this is that on CM, every task is for "your team." Every task works towards a tangible goal. This is not how things are on Aurora, at least not most of the time. Each department has a different set of skills and these very rarely overlap into a "team effort" when it comes to dealing with problems --- the only real example I can think of that would require teamwork are a hivebot beacon. I can only think of one time where I went out of my way to check vending machines for rampant intelligence before anyone called it out. I did this because I was extremely bored and sort of tired. That's the mindset here, really. I don't see it as a "rat race" so much as "extreme boredom." People want things to do. When there is something to do, they will do it. The solution here, I guess, is to add more things to do, make mindless tasks more engaging/complex, but I'm not a coder and I'm not someone who comes up with good ideas.

Looking at this from the perspective of someone who plays engineering: I think I'm guilty of this, to be honest, mostly because when there's something to actually do --- boy, do I wanna go out there and do it. It triggers the rat portion of my brain that lights up when I "accomplish" something. I got a similar feeling when I had to fix the dishwasher at the restaurant I used to work at. The issue here is that one is a complex task that takes time (and one that I wasn't qualified to do, but had to, anyways!) and the other involves, at most, a few clicks. There is no middle-ground when it comes to fixing engineering problems in this game. You are either doing it as quickly as possible or you are not doing it. The best you can do is drag your feet and draw it out for as long as possible, which I try to do, if it isn't important. The issue is (like Sheeplets said) that people go stir crazy. I'm actually kind of struggling to understand what the real problem you're getting at is. The reason people fix minor problems so quickly is because they are minor problems and the map is not very large. In an ideal world, you would have to do quick-time events to fix a broken vending machine. (That isn't sarcasm.) This isn't an ideal world. You click on it with a debugger and wait... or, you click on it with a screwdriver, click on something with a wire cutter, click on it again, then click on it again with a screwdriver. For the hypothetical broken window at the chapel, you click on something and wait. If there are five other guys behind you doing rock-paper-scissors to click on it, this is because they are excited that there's something to do, even if it's totally mindless. also i like running everywhere because i like going fast