rrrrrr

1. See, another great part of the setting as a whole is that nothing exists in a vacuum. I'll use the Skrell as an example, because Skrell lore is a wonderful example because it was deeply lacking for years and isn't, now, mainly on account of it actually tying into other things in the universe. I think some background's worth talking about... much like every other alien species proposed back in 2012, the lore was bad. Ridiculously bad. And by the way, the reason we've got the main three alien species that aren't unique to Aurora is because they were suggested by people who were staff on BS12 at the time, el oh el... anyways, Skrell lore was initially this: "They are frog people. They are from the Jargon system. They are more advanced than humans." That was it. By the way, that applied to every other species. Everything was very simple and the level of interaction/interconnectivity was zilch. There was nothing. Let's compare and contrast that to what the Skrell are now: in terms of cross-species interaction, you've got the entire C'thur hive, a lot of great writing on how dionae get by in the Federation, and some straightforward writing on how things would be for the very rare (presumably human) non-Skrellian citizen... and vice versa. In human space, the local Skrell population is influenced by what system/country they're living in. Solarian Skrell tend to be more in-line with their government, since they're presumably guest workers with high social credit scores; the ones in Biesel are more of a mixed bag, since this is where you start seeing refugees, exiles, criminals, and so on... out in Coalition space, as far from the Federation as possible, things get weird. They're living in some of the freest human sectors having either personally escaped from or being one or two generations removed from people who have escaped from what must seem like an unimaginably oppressive government... so yeah. This alone has created some fun interactions in-game. Keep in mind that, before August of this year, I hadn't consistently played this game for a long, long time. Slowly finding out, in-character, that the Federation was not, in fact, this vaguely more advanced superstate where everything was perfect was a surprise. Finding out that there are Skrellian refugees was a surprise and the canon event wherein someone was forcefully deported was a surprise. That kinda thing wouldn't happen if human lore and non-human lore didn't intersect at all. The writing sows the seeds for these fun interactions and events. I think they're in a good place, right now. More writing on what life is like as so-and-so species in such-and-such place would be nice, but not under the purview of this role, I think. 2. I'm gonna be blunt and say that I think the major focus should be on whichever sector the Horizon is currently in. We're in the Weeping Stars, at the moment, and so far, going off of what I've seen, I think that's true... but I do think that a bigger focus on the Coalition as a whole would be good. A lot of the stuff going on with Sol and Eridani can happen in the background. One major thing that I'd love to see is hammering in that the Coalition is politically diverse. It's decentralized. Yeah, there are countries like Xanu and Konyang that are peaceful, stable democracies --- but there are presumably just as many that are the exact opposite. I'm sorta hinting at this in my arc idea: I don't think that the Coalition is some freewheeling libertarian paradise where everyone gets a vote and a gun and you can grow weed. It's a hands-off group of planets who are aligned for the entirely practical purpose of survival. By sheer size, the Coalition is probably the largest country in the galaxy. All of the major systems are pretty spread out and not all of the worlds in-between Xanu and Assunzione are pleasant to live on. In terms of that, I think seeing more tension between Coalition member-states would be neat... for instance, Gadpathur might think that Xanu's going a little soft on foreign policy and the Himeans might agree. The Coalition's political culture has the stated reputation of being disagreeable and argumentative. Planets ain't in the Coalition to make friends. They're in the Coalition so that they've got trade partners and people to fall back on in case their local planetary navy isn't capable of handling pirates. I'm pretty sure that Biesel's a loremaster thing, but I'll just say that I think Biesel's going in a good direction right now. The Mictlan arc's great. Elyra and Dominia getting into a proxy war on some systems in the Sparring Sea might be fun. The way people talk about Dominia in-game, you'd figure that Dominia was half of the galaxy and actively pushing for the SCC to start firing synthetics out of the mass driver, so I think that having Dominia punch above its weight class a little and pushing into that sector and either directly annexing a system or propping up a proxy state could be good. Dominia should live up to its reputation, I feel. 3. I love off-worlders. I've got a one-track mind, sorta, and I regret not making the current character that I'm stuck on an off-worlder. I think they need to be expanded by quite a bit... out of all the off-worlder characters I've seen in-game, only two of them weren't Scarabs. One was a Jovian and the other was a Burzsian. The Coalition's got the stated reputation of having more spacers than any other country in the game, but I don't think that's reflected all too well. You've got the Scarab fleets, which have a fair bit of depth to them, and you've got Burzsian star-men, who don't get much more other than "Hephaestus employs them" and "they're extremophiles who love cybernetics." Nothing on their culture, religion, or why exactly Burzsia has a "local off-worlder population." The planet's pressure is listed at thirteen-thousand, which means that it's got a higher gravity... they live in orbit, so it goes, but work on the planet itself. That's gotta be rough. Not a whole lot to grab onto, which is a shame, 'cuz Burzsians are cool, conceptually. One thing that puzzles me is that gravity generators were invented in the early 23rd century; previously, they were a much more recent invention, dating back to the 2420s, if I remember right... I think reverting it to that more-recent date would open up more possibilities for off-worlders. A billion people are listed as living in orbit around Earth. A solid percentage of that billion's gotta be off-worlders, right? So yeah --- I think off-worlders should be expanded. They're a whole species (subspecies, I guess) that's received comparatively little love over the years.

After some discussion on the Discord (which was fun, thanks to everyone who chatted), I'd say that my thoughts on "which direction the Alliance should take" need to be clarified a little more. I don't think that things should go back to business as usual. When I wrote "authoritarian measures," I meant keeping the status quo in the SRMs, which are likely to be unstable for a while. Having elections be delayed or even cancelled in the SRMs could lead to some fun debates in-game. My thoughts on how the broader Alliance should move forward is more of a mixed bag; reform is needed, yeah, and I think that's the way to go. It'd be a breath of fresh air compared to how Sol's been doing things for as long as I can remember playing on this server --- almost a decade, now. I don't think that it should be easy, or straightforward, and I do think that the threat of backsliding should be a possibility, but as far as things go outside of the SRMs: reform, political tension, tension between the Navy and a newly elected civilian government, more nationalization of megacorporate interests. The latter's something that I definitely think should continue, story-wise, because it's morally grey. Nationalizing private assets is arguably good for the Alliance... and bad for the Republic. It'd keep the fun and I'd honestly say integral conflict between Sol and Biesel in place without having one side be space fascists. I also think that there ought to be two or three more notable Solarian politicians, on top of Strom and Trang. (Varzieva isn't a politician.) I also-also think that Strom becoming the Prime Minister would be a bad move, story-wise, since Strom represents the "civilian" Solarian right-wing... the guys who were in control before Frost showed up. A left-ish Prime Minister could be a good change. I'm not sure how elections are going to be handled. I recall players getting to vote, last time there was an election... a neat little "election season" arc with a lot of political news articles spurring debate in-game could be cool. Regarding your first question, I'm not a hundred-percent sure on what you're asking, since it's a very broad question, but I'll try my best to answer it. I think that it's in a good place, as of now. Almost all of the six major human factions (Biesel, Sol, Elyra, Eridani, Dominia, and the Coalition) are imperfect, some more than others. For example, Biesel, Sol, Elyra, and the Coalition all have flaws, but there are arguments to be made for each of them. All of them (except Elyra, which is stable at the moment but likely to experience issues as the phoron crisis continues) are democracies with major flaws. Both Biesel and Sol are in bed with megacorporations, Biesel more than Sol, Sol was stagnant for decades before collapsing, and the Coalition's hands-off approach with member states allows dictatorships to exist inside of it, on top of sheer size being a problem... Sol's just coming out of a military junta, which is going to be interesting and something I'd be excited to help work on, if this application's accepted. Dominia and Eridani are both openly bad places to live, which I think is fine, honestly. There are countries today that, frankly, I'd have trouble finding a good side to. My thoughts are that having most major human factions be flawed is a good thing. Nations are inherently imperfect. I'm getting dangerously close to revealing my actual political views, which aren't all that interesting, so I'll stop there. There's no clear "good guy" or "bad guy" in the setting, as far as humans go, which I think's a good thing. Yes, I would be willing to work with the lore team and developers directly to make it work. I wouldn't have applied if I wasn't willing to work with others. I understand that concessions need to be made and that, more likely than not, what I'm proposing is more of a rough outline than the final product. In my prior experience as the synthetic lore head, many, many years ago, I worked pretty closely with community members and the loremaster at the time. While I often injected my own ideas of what was funny or cool into what I wrote at the time --- which has lead to almost none of it surviving --- I should point out that I was about fifteen years old. Nothing I wrote at fifteen has stood the test of time. That's just how it is.

Given that the "language debayification" proposal is, at most, being looked at by some people with zero promises as to whether or not it'll be accepted, I think it's okay to share. Here's a link to the Google doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dw2acBWyUIS4i1Xhc9oJYot2IwThtKYQAHEkaJQO_Og/edit?usp=sharing

Further updated the OP to remove any ideas/thoughts that were irrelevant to the role I'm applying for. Mostly megacorporate stuff.

OP has been updated with a (hopefully) valid arc idea.

Woah, good catch, thanks. I was totally unaware; I'll come up with a new arc and edit the post to reflect that. (I still think Einstein Engines should be renamed and am leaving that there.) Thank you for your kind words! To be blunt: a lot is going to change in four hundred years. I usually find myself walking away from BS12's lore without much to say, but one thing that I think they got right --- really right --- was the option to play humans who are genetically modified. "But we already have geneboosting," you say to me. "Wacky Dominian stuff! Seven foot tall primaries!" Baystation 12 has about four human sub-species, one of which (space-adapted humans) have an equivalent here, one of which doesn't make sense (grav-adapted), one of which is very cool and awesome and high concept and also could not easily be slotted into this setting (Tritonians; essentially, sub-aquatic humans... very Man After Man) --- and one that leads me to my ultimate point, vat-grown humans. We're only a decade or two away from the first artificially-gestated human. That's going to be a big deal. A paradigm shift. I genuinely think the moment that we can alter a fetus's sex, projected appearance, traits, and so on would be a far bigger deal than genuine AGI. Imagine what four-hundred years worth of research into that would give us. It'd be the genetic equivalent of wealth inequality. I think a page on that --- an actual, in-depth page on how far genetics research has come by 2465 --- would be great. This part of the post's already pretty long, and I'd probably start getting into how that proposal could be reflected in the actual game (in other words, ahead of myself), so I'll cut that part off here. Basically, I just think there should be a page ala the "Technology" one that goes into 25th century medical advancements. How long is the average human life? How much does it vary from system to system? Have we cured the common cold? In fact, have we cured any diseases? It's something I'd like to write about! Short-term, the ASSN is still not doing good. The Northern and Southern Wildlands have only recently come under Solarian control again, and probably not even entirely --- I imagine a fair number of pirates, secessionists, and extremists are still floating around out there or camped out on obscure planets, or hiding on more developed ones. It'd be impossible for the ASSN to subdue every single group out there that either does not want to be a part of the ASSN or benefits from the ASSN not exercising control over these areas... so a few news articles insinuating that, hey, it takes a while for countries that just got out of a major civil war to get fully functional again. The most interesting direction that I think the ASSN could take, post-civil war, would to have it experience more trouble. Remember, the ASSN was stagnant for a long time. Recent events have shown that it's also not impossible to get rid of, on a local level. That'd embolden a lot of people who, before the whole Frost debacle, probably just kept their heads down and decided not to rock the boat. This would, naturally, lead to more authoritarian measures --- elections being delayed on a local level, martial law on certain planets, constrained freedom of speech/movement. First the post office gets bombed... then they enact martial law... then a bunch of Eridanian mercenaries show up to "keep the peace"... then they shoot your dog... so on and so forth. Political violence is a vicious cycle that's hard to break. The ASSN is going to be unstable in certain places for a long, long time, especially on the frontier. As far as interstellar relations go: I do not think the Alliance's relationship improving with Biesel or the Coalition would make too much sense. The ASSN just got out of proxy wars with both and both are currently in possession of worlds that formerly belonged to the ASSN. Biesel itself is a relatively young breakaway state controlled by megacorporations whose interests are frequently at odds with the ASSN. Depending on how things play out --- further nationalization of megacorporate assets, Einstein Engines (bad name) becoming more intertwined with the Solarian state --- it's not really a recipe for good relations. The phoron crisis is probably hurting NanoTrasen's bottom line, more and more as time goes on, and, hey, it just so happens that NanoTrasen is the top dog in the SCC, who just so happen to be completely in bed with the FRB's government... The way things are now would probably embolden the ASSN to do something against Biesel. A full-on war would be off the table, but there's a lot of things that countries --- especially countries at this scale, with all these resources and all this wacky technology --- can do to each other. Regarding Elyra: I can imagine things returning to the pre-collapse status quo. [John Sol voice] Gotta get that sweet, juicy phoron... even if it means playing nice with the Elyrans... and anyways, Elyra's a break-away state... broke away a long time ago, though... why do we hate Elyrans, again...? Mm... phoron. As for how the ASSN develops ideologically... I don't think that political ideologies in the 25th century would fit onto a left-right spectrum. Not neatly, anyways. I see more hostility to non-EE megacorporations, "populism", authoritarian measures, and so on. That kind of thing. Mars has felt weirdly deprecated ever since Violet Dawn. It used to be a pretty big deal. I mean, it still is, and there are a lot of Martian characters, but it comes with the caveat of everything you know and love dying. Talk about a bummer. So, yeah, some kind of reconstruction effort would make sense... Mars is a major-league planet in the inner sphere. There wouldn't not be an effort to get it back to where it was. It needs to be expanded on what life is like inside of the arcologies that managed to come out of it mostly unscathed --- i.e, the places that the vast majority of Martian refugees would end up going. If Mars is even half-successfully redeveloped, there'd be a major resettlement effort, given that there are refugees from other places inside of the ASSN, mainly on the frontier.

Ckey/BYOND Username: Timby Time in Community: Since around ~2014, so nine years or around 1/3rd of my entire life. Position Being Applied For: (Wiki Maintainer, Lore Developer, Deputy Lore developer): Deputy Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page? Yes. Past Experiences/Knowledge: I was briefly the IPC lore head for a few months many years ago. I was responsible for "I Love Meat." My sole surviving contributions are a handful of news articles and "Sven Karlssen," the in-universe reason that FBPs do not work. Examples of Past Work: None worth mentioning Why are you applying for this position and why do you believe you would make a good Human Lore Deputy? I’m applying for this position because I enjoy writing, write compulsively, and want to build on and help expand the setting; I genuinely believe that the server’s setting is a fairly strong science-fiction universe that has a lot of room for storytelling. I would make a good “HLD” because I am a published writer (I will provide proof in private on request, since this is attached to my government name) and I am a good writer. My favorite science-fiction writers are Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick, and Arthur C. Clarke. I definitely favor New Wave writers more than the “big three” who dominated much of the 40s and 50s, i.e, Heinlein, Aasimov, and Clarke, but as I’ve said, I greatly enjoy Clarke’s writing. What is your favourite part of Human Lore and why? What is your least favourite? (Note: If you submitted something that was canonised and is now part of human lore, you may not select your own canonised submission as your favourite or least favourite part of the lore.) My favorite part of human lore (at the moment: this sometimes changes) is the ASSN and the semi-recently ended Solarian Civil War arc; way back in the Middle Ages (2014 – 2017), the lore for the ASSN was extremely lacking. It has since, as far as I can tell, been greatly expanded and heavily re-worked. My second favorite is probably a coin-toss between the Republic of Biesel – which has similarly been greatly expanded – and off-worlders, who are intrinsically cool. All I can say is that these are just cool and interesting things to read about. This more broadly goes into the fact that the server sets up organic inter-crew conflict via political allegiances… I find that pretty cool. People have to actually argue about these things, too, since they can’t just murder each other over them. No human faction is one-hundred percent good or one-hundred percent evil. My least favorite part of human lore is Dominia, mainly because I knew the original writer. It’s gotten a complete make-over since he was around, so I can’t exactly point to anything in particular that I dislike now, but there’s that. I also dislike the name “Einstein Engines.” Someone should change that. What are three projects (medium to large sized additions, reworks, or arcs) you would like to do or help organize if made Human Lore deputy? (NEW PLANETS OR FACTIONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ADDITION AT THIS PRESENT TIME. DO NOT INCLUDE THEM IN YOUR ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.) - There are two major planets listed on the Coalition page that don’t have their own pages: Zaurghis and Crosk. I would like to work on getting them on-par, in terms of written lore, with the other planets listed on that page… maybe not Xanu-levels of expansion, but something to firmly grasp, y’know? - Something I’m presently working on is an expansion of human language lore, i.e, cutting out all the 2013-era BS12 badness and replacing it with my own personal brand of hot, juicy, 2023-Aurora goodness. I’ve privately shown it to some people, and I think it’s getting looked at, so I don’t know if I can put this here. - An overview of medical advancements that humanity has made by the 25th century; essentially, the average lifespan by system, the status of diseases, and so on. Virology hasn't been in the game for a long, long time, but that doesn't mean that all disease has been wiped out. Players seem to regularly operate under the assumption that it hasn't been, anyways, which I agree with. - While much of this is left up to the purview of the player, I think that a page going over what's considered "common knowledge" in each human country could be good. I'm also interested in adding more depth to the setting's lore on education; going over advancements in pedagogy, what exact fields of study can you lead you to being hired as an X, Y, or Z, and so on. What do you believe are the current strengths and weaknesses of human lore? Why? What would you do to improve upon the weaknesses? One of the major strengths, I think, is diversity. There’s a huge array of planets and systems to choose, on top of the “small outer rim/Coalition planet” fallback that essentially lets you come up with your own. Almost every conceivable culture and religion is represented by one of the planets in-game. Way back in the Dark Ages, (2014 – 2017), you really didn’t have anything like this. I’d say that a weakness is, uh, honestly, some of the names and color schemes of certain megacorporations. Zeng-Hu's color scheme is not good. I also find “Hephaestus Industries” to be a goofy name. “Titanius Aeson” is the name of an anime villain, not a guy who runs a major industrial manufacturing company. I get that they’re going for a Greek myth-thing, but… c’mon. C’mon. Titanius Aeson. That’s the name of a guy who says stuff like “heh… everything is going according to plan.” What are your thoughts on the past arcs that have been organised by the human lore team? I’m going to be honest, I took a really long break from playing this game, so I’m not a hundred-percent clear on any of the arcs. I only personally witnessed the “Steel on the Horizon” mini-arc, which I found to be very fun, exciting, and cool. What little I saw of the Civil War arc was also very cool. What is an idea for a future arc that you would like to have a part in writing and organising in the future? (Note: If you provided an arc or arcs as part of your answer for question 3, you may expand on the ideas for that arc or arcs here, or you may provide another idea.) An arc reflecting broader tensions in the setting. Working title: "Shore Leave" (those are scare quotes.) The SCCV Horizon is waylaid by a small fleet patrolling the space around a Coalition-aligned planet (name: HZ-4451) whose local planetary government is undemocratic and suspicious of Biesel, ships flying under Biesel's flag, and the SCC. Given that we're dealing with an entire planet here (even though it's a backwater dictatorship!), "small" still translates to "capable of really messing the Horizon up." From there, things would develop: the ship would be boarded by customs officials and militiamen and searched (translate to: ransacked) and command staff would be interrogated on such exciting questions as "where are you going" and "why are you here." A possible aside wherein command staff has to shuttle down to negotiate safe passage with someone of great --- no, interstellar importance --- the Secretary of Interplanetary Commerce. After an elongated spiel about the cost of "ensuring safe passage" and a bunch of other bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, it should become apparent that they're asking the Horizon to pay a toll. Not exactly a steep toll, but who likes paying tolls? The Horizon hangs out in high-orbit of the planet, "hosting" a small contingent of colonial bureaucrats and militiamen. Keeping them entertained and fed is a top priority. Service needs to roll out the red carpet for these guys, since they think they're very important... or at least that they can get away with acting like they are. Meanwhile, on HZ-4451's moon --- a small, airless rock that's been home to the planet's sole prison for nearly three centuries --- a small group of prisoners hijack a shuttle and escape! Getting to the Horizon might be their only real ticket off HZ-4451... the thing is, they weren't accounting for the Horizon getting shaken down. They're political prisoners. Allegedly. Would it be worth causing a minor incident over helping alleged political prisoners escape? Some plausible other occurrences: 1. A joint Gadpathurian-Himean patrol (the CMV Indra, Bakunin, and Fuck Hephaestus Industries) passes by. If the Horizon hails them and tries to ask for help, all the bridge crew hear is cruel, cruel laughter... 'cuz Gadpathurians and Himeans don't exactly care for the SCC, themselves. 2. The "political prisoners" are lying. They're planning on waiting until the Horizon leaves HZ-4451's airspace, stealing everything they can, and bugging out. 3. The political prisoners are telling the truth! Most of them are pro-democracy activists, pacifists, and conscientious objectors. By the way, escaping from a lunar prison gets you executed by firing squad on HZ-4451. Uh-oh. 4. A survey vessel (the CSV James Hutton) working for the Coalition's Bureau of Xenogeology passes by and gets held up, too... this vessel is also boarded and, after a few minutes, any radio communications that the Horizon has with the Hutton abruptly end. The Horizon's telecommunications are fine... is the Hutton's telecommunications array down, or is something more sinister afoot? Have you ever been subject to any strikes or bans of any kind from Aurora's moderators or admins? If so, how long ago were these actions and what were they for? I have been permanently banned in the past for reasons that I cannot entirely remember. Going off of the threads I’ve seen on the forums, I had a week-long ban for something involving koi’s – which I did not know anything about, at the time – and I made a joke appeal in-character as a medieval “pilgrime” calling for rapscallions, knaves, and scallywags to support me in my cause. This caused the ban to be upgraded to permanent. This was back in 2016-2017. I’m not entirely clear on when it happened, because I have very few coherent memories from before 2019.

on github people are saying that removing sensors for PDAs means someone has to go be the "sensorbitch" if there is an expectation for someone to be a "sensorbitch" then maybe sensors should just be removed completely, lol

Sensors should be removed. The fact that it's expected for people to either sit in the penalty box and stay glued to the computer or walk around with the program set up in the upper-right corner of their screen is, uh, not great. Doesn't sound good. Someone already said that SS13 is an action-horror game, which is objectively true. Having a solid fifth of the server on high-pop with their eyes on everyone's locations and vitals at all times defeats that completely. There are already relatively few isolated areas on the ship, outside of the maintenance tunnels (which aren't all that big), so having suit sensors just further takes away any feeling of isolation/creepiness. As always, I feel the need to point out that suit sensors were a /tg/station invention. As always, everything not great or cheugy or stupid about the game can be traced back to /tg/. Just sayin', lol.

keep in mind that i wrote this post in a lighthearted spirit of gaiety essentially everything about ss13 that can accurately be called "cheugy" can be traced back to /tg/, a server with the distinction of being the most popular open-source codebase and also having been run continuously by people who have almost no taste. every department getting a pet until eventually we have people asking for a "cargo spider" or some dumb shit like that? that was /tg/ space carp, a dumb fantasy monster that poses no threat and is annoying? that was /tg/, also a "meme" by the absurdly loose standards the people here have for that word the frankly bad map design we still see to this day? can also be blamed on /tg/ and how for almost a decade, boxstation was the "default" map compare how /tg/ does pets vs. how goon, a server that is actually good, does them /tg/pets are basically just objects that amble around and maybe shit out of a canned emote every now and then. goonstation, which is far and away the most aesthetically and mechanically pleasing server, does in fact give animals basic ai. they do stuff. many of them serve purposes. this is because goonstation has been developed by people and not neaderthals who think steampunk is cool, like /tg/ was im gonna be blunt and say this idea is half-baked and like every other department pet idea to have been made since 2012, which is basically the dawn of time for this game. the neolithic period. "wow wouldnt it be cool if we had X animal in Y department?" and a bunch of people nod to themselves and some guy sprites it then it's in the game and. wow, adds absolutely nothing. in 2026 when horses are the generic "funny animal of the year" like capybaras are now you will all be posting ideas to add a cargo horse and making long impassioned spiels about how actually it would make sense for cargo to have a pet horse considering that horses can pull crates, same old same old. next canon event i'm murdering every animal onboard other than ian and making a thread saying it should be canon

This is actually a good idea.

Having only started playing again a month ago after a long, long break from SS13, all I can say is that I was immediately turned off by how some of the people in the not-main Discord acted. There was a general vibe of elitism and the feeling that they were somehow better than other players for... being in a public Discord, I guess? That, on top of the already mentioned passive-aggressiveness that seems to be a part of the "culture" over there. It was off-putting. also garn wouldn't give me the old folks home role even though i was ipc loredev back in ~2015, so, I do not see any downsides. Omicega basically said everything that needed to be say. Weirdo parallel culture of passive aggressive players that needs to be uprooted and stopped.

this song fucking sucks ass dude

I didn't say they couldn't be a semi-regular thing, just that they probably couldn't be more than semi-regular. The ideal (the perfect ideal) would be that every round is canon and events happen once or twice a week. I'm mostly in agreement with what you said, otherwise.

I've talked about this already in another thread, but I definitely think that a lot of the issues that current antag roles have stems from two things. 1. People are forced to improvise an entertaining gimmick that includes a fair number of people on the spot. This is difficult. 2. They have far less to work with than admins running events. 3. There are zero stakes. No one actually dies. Nothing is canon. People like stakes. This is why events are almost always well-attended. I'm going to try and be a little more positive than the above post. I've been playing Space Station 13 for thirteen years (haha) and I genuinely do like the action and conflict that antagonists provide, even if what they can provide is, by nature, limited. If it weren't for antagonists, what would engineering have to do, for example --- repair broken windows on the off chance whoever's piloting drives the ship through a carp shoal? Setting up the SM reactor, thrusters, RCON, et cetera takes all of fifteen minutes. Twenty if you're doing it alone. If it weren't for antagonists, I simply would not have a lot to do when I play this game. Of course, we just got out of two canon events where engineering had a whole heck of a lot to do, so that's sort of a null point if you aren't taking into the account that running events takes time and effort and they can't, by any means, be more than a semi-regular thing. That's the main issue with removing antagonists, I think. Without 'em, outside of events, you're playing extended. I don't think anything's wrong with extended, but I don't speak for everyone. For every extended round with great, organic, canonical conflict, there's five where not a whole lot happens. People stand around in a hallway and shoot the shit about intergalactic politics. You need to keep in mind that I'm unwell and can entertain myself by infodumping on people about the ship's water recycling systems, but again, I don't speak for everyone. I genuinely think a sizeable portion of the playerbase would leave if antagonists got removed. And you can say maybe that they're not players worth having, but I'd just call that jaded. I think the issue is that a lot of people have seen every conceivable permutation on traitor, mercenary, changeling, et cetera. These basic gamemodes are tired. I can admit that even though I'm easily entertained. They need to be reworked and I think there need to be more things for, say, traitors to do in the absence of a coherent, on-the-spot gimmick. Give them more stuff to steal, or something.

I feel like this is an absurdly bad-faith way to view the people who actually play antagonist. The idea that actually being antagonistic is an "OOC d-head" move. Not a lot of people play antagonist. This is why "antag main" is a thing --- because so few people actually decide to play antagonist roles that just toggling it on is enough to consistently get traitor, changeling, rev, whatever. Keep in mind that these are the people who try to keep everyone entertained for two hours straight, for better or worse, with more limited abilities than staffers and little-no planning. Antagonists are not staff running an event. The best antag players can make what they're doing feel like that, but they're not. Someone keeps escaping... okay. There are weak points built into the brig. Escaping means that the gimmick, whatever that may be, keeps going. Give the people who actually decide to play antag some grace, 'cuz they give everyone else a whole lot. I almost wrote a whole compare-and-contrast list, comparing how this server and another server that I won't name does this, but I'm not gonna post it, because it sounds negative. (I enjoy playing this server.)

Think I personally witnessed example number-one, here. I was leaving the ship (Coalition surveyor, got stuck, it's a long story) and had talked to the mutineers a few times, mostly because I also wanted to talk to the Captain and work out how I'd pay for the medical treatment my character had received and negotiate leaving. Anyways, on my way out, I see the Warden getting rolled out of the medical bay, and they shout at me: "GADPATHURIAN! HELP!" It was pretty nuts. Anyways, both of these examples sound like poor play by the people responsible. Like, "shoulda ahelped" levels. Just my two cents.

This is only partly related, but I think it's a cultural problem where people will see an antag's gimmick and go "this is dumb. This is so stupid. I need to prove this wrong, immediately." Revolutionaries taking action? "Um, who cares? Bad idea? We still have jobs? You're dumb?" Traitors traitoring? "Ummm, you realize you're gonna die, right? We're gonna kill you? So stupid." Mercenaries? "You know we have a giant railgun, right, dumb-dumb? You big dummy. Shoulda just stayed home." Gonna be blunt: this is weird Reddit behavior. I do not play antag and I groan every time I see this. The fact that they had to make a new policy so that command just doesn't go "source?" at every out-there announcement that ties into the traitor's gimmick speaks volumes about how most people deal with antags. The genuine hatred I see for people who play as antags is weird, too. Super weird. Yes, a lot of gamemodes have issues. No, that doesn't mean they should be removed. I've seen very few bad antags. Quite a few boring ones, quite a few who get captured by the largest department in the game whose entire job is based around hunting them down, but none that I would call bad. A heck of a lot of great antags, too. I think it goes without saying that people dragging antags to the roboticist's lab within minutes of capture probably stems, at least in some cases, from an OOC dislike of antags.

In reply to the post above mine: ironically, characters being incredibly callous/mocking about people having their brains surgically removed and put into a mechanical slave-body is very, very grim. I think it's less that we're playing in a lighter universe and more the fact that things look lighter. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Horizon looks a lot less run-down than the Aurora. It's a big white spaceship flying around the galaxy on a noble mission (to make money for shareholders.) It has guns. There are a lot of windows everywhere; it's like an open-floor office, in a way. It has a big central atrium (that's an absolute nightmare to deal with if it becomes depressurized.) It's the SCC's flagship. Part of this is just my personal aesthetic preference leaking in, but the Horizon looks a heck of a lot cleaner, nicer, and more pleasant than basically any other SS13 map I've seen. (I think this is a bad thing.) It's sort of at odds with the fact that every character on the ship works for the setting's equivalent of Weyland-Yutani, a soulless conglomerate of megacorporations whose only goal is to make money. It's kinda baked in, at this point. I'm not sure how it'd be "fixed."

Regarding marooning: we're on a space ship. It's the law of the sea... well, stars, I guess, that people who cause a lotta trouble get tossed overboard. I'm not sure what the timeframe is between the Horizon's various ports of call, but if you're going to be weeks, months in space without hitting any semblance of civilization and you've got a criminal onboard who's showing zero remorse and keeps trying to escape the brig --- you toss 'em overboard. The game's setting is a corporate dystopia. Megacorporations are borderline or de facto governments, in some places. You character probably signed a waiver agreeing to this kind of thing.

1. Let's get more than recent, honestly. The Contact War and the subsequent nuclear holocaust only strengthens Rezak's resolve to make as much money as lizardly (not humanly) possible. At twenty-eight years old, Rezak has no coherent memories of what Moghes was like prior to the Contact War. This upsets him. He would not associate with anyone who is openly against the Hegemony --- not because he particularly loves the Hegemony, but because the Hegemony weren't the guys who lobbed a bunch of nuclear bombs around. (Rezak's traditional in the sense that he's culturally traditional.) Rezak finds the sequence of events that led to Not'zar's coronation suspicious, but also mostly agrees with his policies. And not even in a 'pretending to agree with the current ruler to conform' way, Rezak genuinely believes that Not'zar is a good king/hegemon. He also believes, without zero evidence, that he and Not'zar have much in common. He was secretly glad to see the civil war start, given that it would allow Not'zar (long may he reign!) the chance to clean up the Hegemony and get rid of those churls who wish to stand in the way of progress (and also he would mumble something about honor.) The expansion of Hephaestus is another fact of life. More aliens on Moghes. Business as usual. Rezak finds life on Moghes deeply unpleasant and the rationing is just another example of that. (He doesn't eat a lot, though.) 2. Rezak finds humans to be creepy and unpredictable. There's something deeply off-putting about their eyes, not to mention hair, which he finds strange at best and positively repulsive at worst. Skrell, perhaps, are even worse: they're too "wet." Still, the aliens are paying him, so it can't be that bad, can it? I mean, they are a more advanced civilization than his own. Maybe after a while, Unathi will be more creepy, more moist, too... and colonizing their own star systems, more than they could have ever hoped for? (Yep. God bless the glorious Izweski Hegemony.) Aside from his own instinctual distrust of aliens, Rezak has readily adopted some facets of human culture to better fit in: he uses the term "haters" to describe essentially anything and everything, even inanimate objects, that displease him. He also calls people "bro." Rezak, paradoxically, likes most people he encounters, so long as they're of a similar disposition as him. 3. Rezak believes in God insofar that things are going well for him. As of late, working aboard an alien space ship, makin' a whole lotta money pushing crates around, things are going well. He has no particular faith on the Aut'akh other than what he's heard every other person around him say about them: that they're a buncha freaky soul-mutilating outlaws. In his darkest moments, Rezak believes that Juzida Aizahi is right about almost everything.

Is this dead/denied? This is way, way, way better than what the setting has at the moment. Leagues better. I want to take my own crack at it if it's denied.

Please give the windows some transparency back. It may have been a mistake, for all I know; going off of my experience, DM does not behave when you paste an image with transparent elements into a DMI. You have to manually go about that sort of thing.

Have interacted a bit with Iota, less so with Ulery. I only have two things to say: your sentence structure and syntax feels off in a way that I can't really put down to character. This is a game based almost entirely around writing and clicking on things (and no one's perfect), but I feel like the dialogue you write in-game is somewhat lacking --- this would be problematic in a role like XO, which doesn't have a ton to do mechanically. Again, no one's perfect, and this is a pretty odd criticism to make, but it's something I've noticed. (And not something that really matters. Improper grammar isn't against the sever rules, and a lot of people in this community speak English as a second language.) My second thing to say is that you talked about getting put into a positronic chassis as Iota; this is outright mentioned as impossible on the wiki. A pretty minor slip-up that I think probably stems from people suggesting that in-game and probably not your fault, but one that seems worth mentioning. All that said... yeah, +1. Give Airlines7 a shot. A chance. Put him in, coach!