rrrrrr

Also, the capybara is named 'coconut' in the .dmi, a reference to the 'coconut doggy' meme. Capybaras are no more or less a meme than monkeys are. They're both funny looking dudes, which amuses people.

-1. Pet bloat has been a long-term problem ever since Ian was first added to /tg/ in 2012~. Kill Pun-Pun off and don't replace him. He almost never sees any usage, which is tragic, because I love monkeys. Other people have pointed out why putting a capybara into a cramped, tiny room is a form of animal cruelty. I cannot suspend my disbelief that a one-hundred and fifty pound semi-aquatic rodent would make for a good pet aboard on a cramped refinery/exploration vessel with no bodies of water or even any open grassy areas for it to frolic in. I say this as a staunch lover of all large South American mammals, such as the tapir and capybara. People should be asking why every department needs a pet when the vast majority of them, outside of Ian, who has seniority and makes sense, almost never see any use.

Sleeve patches already exist, I think, but you make a much better point. No need for these to be two separate items. I have shoulder-sleeve sprites for every flag pictured in the OP. May be missing some that are in the flagpatch selection, so I'll get to work on that.

i was aware, i just don't like where flagpatches are. these go on the sleeve.

side-note but the strongest argument against the sol alliance is that the tiny little flag they put in the upper left corner of everything looks like shit

i wasn't sure if the martian flag on the wiki (whose emblem in the middle appears to have been squashed, lol) was current. what do you think about the rest, Zelmana?

imagine pulling into an intergalactic gas station and they've got embroidered patches for sale right next to the cyber-vapes or something, idk Following a brief "discussion" on Discord, I went out of my way to sprite shoulder-sleeve patches for (most) in-game countries, plus a few Earth-nations whose flags are highly pleasing. Quality might not be the best, but it is what it is. Two of them are novelty patches related to space exploration history. They have equipped sprites, which are very small but (hopefully) distinctive enough to be told apart if you squint. They're meant to be attached to a jumpsuit. They're embroidered patches. The kind you buy at a gift shop. An interstellar gift shop in the year 2465 where everyone's speaking some kind of mish-mash of Chinese, German, and Spanish and there are aliens making weird noises at you. If people are interested in these, I'll make more and go through the trouble of actually getting everything into a .dmi. pre-emptive answer to a question "why would someone wear a USA flag patch in 2465?" why would a japanese guy who doesn't speak english wear a t-shirt that has "FUCK ME THE GUY" on it? because it looks cool

I was thinking that it'd just set you on fire and give you a lot of burn damage, yeah, not gib you.

I really enjoyed it. This was the first event I've attended in a while. (I believe the last one I saw was a KOTW event years ago.) I think it was good to get the point across that the Horizon is moving through a dangerous, sparsely inhabited sector of space and that working on the Horizon can be and canonically is a reasonably hazardous workplace, that space is not entirely safe, so on and so forth. The mention of hazard pay was a good touch. Felt it was kinda hard to gauge how canon-hazardous it is to work on the Horizon, because antags aren't canon. "This is the first time we've seen X," etc. (Of course, several other events with extremely high death tolls have probably gotten this point across already.) I think a good mix of less violent/intense events and ones like this one would be something like 75%-25%. Worth pointing out that an intense event wouldn't necessarily equate to things exploding and ship-to-ship combat, although I personally find it really interesting to see just how messed up the ship got after a solid hour of getting shot at. (It surprisingly wasn't that bad and I only almost died twice.) Side-note: I don't know what service roles are supposed to do during events. Engineering was doing damage control and occasionally manning weapons, operations was manning weapons, R&D was throwing out gear, most of security went out to board the abandoned Hephaestus vessel, and command was commanding. There doesn't seem to be much of a place for service during events like this, which is unfortunate. I can personally think of a few plausible events that'd be very intense for service players.

Standing behind the thrusters when the SCCV Horizon moves should literally just kill you. Instantly. It should be bad. I'm talking instant death, maximum burn damage to every single part of your body. And it should do that if you stand behind the Intrepid when it's taking off, too. It should actually fucking kill you. Non-joking summary: this idea stemmed from a brief discussion on Discord. Standing behind thrusters when the ship moves/a shuttle is taking off does not, to my surprise, kill you. It should. It should instantly kill you. There should be hazard signs. This idea's pretty straightforward (i.e, the thrusters should kill you if you're standing behind them), so I don't feel too bad about this thread being brief. Thanks for reading.

Thanks for the replies! I'm not one-hundred percent sure on what you mean here, but I think (I think! based on what I think you're saying) you have a pretty good point... all that being said, I don't think it would be too difficult to get a little more detailed while also being respectful. And for what it's worth, I haven't seen these vast generalizations. (But maybe I haven't been looking too hard.) Mentions of religion on the wiki are rare. Hinduism, the third-largest religion in the world, is mentioned exclusively on three pages relating to Xanu Prime. I guess Gadpathurians are all atheists. (Atheism, for what it's worth, is only mentioned on five pages: one relating to a region in Moghes, three relating to the DPRA and Tajaran culture, and one relating to... Xanu Prime.) I don't think you came off as rude at all! Thank you for your kind words. I agree that it's a pretty fraught topic and that, understandably, staff are a little hesitant because, you know... the playerbase is pretty varied. Kids of all ages, for better or worse, play Space Station Thirteen... and a lot of these kids aren't super nuanced writers. I will say that ethnicity/ethnoreligions are a whole 'nother can of worms. I'd also hope that Aurora goes for the Star Trek thing where no one gives a shit about race in the future but I have never seen a concrete answer on that on any server.

Big post below. tl;dr is: I agree with both of you, basically, but I am mentally unwell and am passionate about speculative fiction that deals with religion. Read at your own risk. I figured the date on the thread I linked made it all a little questionable, yeah. I (personally) don't see anything wrong with having the basics of something as large as the religions we're familiar with down, just in a sort of 'this is where X system of belief is at in the 25th century' sort of way. (If you can't tell, I'm a big fan of SF that bothers dealing with religion/religious questions: Dune, The Sparrow, A Canticle for Leibowitz, et cetera.) Before I write what is undoubtedly going to be a long, impassioned spiel about where religion slots into SF, I want to note that I have a degree in Religious Studies. I'm very passionate about this sort of thing, so if I come off in a certain way, just know that I have good intentions. I find the whole "religion is headcanon based" thing to be a little bit... odd? Headcanons tend to run into each other without about as much grace and panache as two passenger trains headed towards each other. I find it especially odd given that the vast majority of religions we have around today, in the 21st century, have been around for at least hundreds if not thousands of years. What, we figure out interstellar travel and suddenly every planet's got a different pope? Maybe when you get really far from Sol, and over a long period of time, that'd make sense... but we're not really dealing with that! There are magical (I can think of no other term to use, since Aurora isn't a hard SF setting) warp engines; we're not dealing with a thousand years between then and now, either, just four hundred and change. I'll definitely try and expand on it, which might be a little slow coming. (Just got hired to teach at a school two weeks ago, school for-real starts tomorrow, so that's eating up a lot of my free time.) Two ideas I had kicking around was a past incident where missionaries went, illegally, to an alien planet (either Moghes or Adhomai) and ended up getting killed, which would obviously be some kind of situation. Another would be further hammering in that Mormons are basically born-and-bred bureaucrats and intelligence agents (the stuff about Mormons being targeted for recruitment in the State Department and CIA is true.) These are people who have a cultural aversion to a lot of human foibles... i.e, drinking, smoking, premarital/adulterous sex... they're diligent. They're patriotic. I can imagine Biesel/Coalition/frontier people emphatically not trusting or liking mainstream Mormons and viewing them as Solarian imperialists. I think I mostly covered what you said above --- you make some good points, but I find the dearth of lore on actual religions a little odd and find the 'headcanon' thing to be a little off-putting. I'm not one-hundred percent sure on what you mean by 'not directly available in-game,' either, since the LDS movement is covered under 'Christianity.' (Yes, Mormons are Christian, specifically Christian in a way that makes perfect sense if you take into account the religious climate of the United States at the time Joseph Smith was preaching.) [I push my glasses up and my face is immediately transfigured into that of the nerd emoji] Space Station 13 roleplaying servers have always had lukewarm at best religious lore and a major part of this is that, at least in the days of yore (like, 2012-2015), a lot of the people involved were atheists who had zero interest in writing about religion in an SF setting. I'm talking generally, here, this isn't about you, GeneralCamo, just something I've noticed after years and years (half of my life) on the periphery of this whole thing. Anyways, lore basically exists as a framework for players to jump off of. All lore. The way I see it, the more there is and the more detailed it is, the better! Way back in the dark ages (2013), Tajaran lore was this: they are people who look like cats. They used to be owned by an alien race called The Slavemasters who are gone now. By the grace of God, Tajaran are now an actually compelling, well-written alien species! This was accomplished by actually writing something. Anyways, I dunno what my point was, here. I like science-fiction. Aurora is (generally) a good science-fiction setting (if slightly fantastical) that's presently lacking in some things. As for the impact it'd have on characters on the Horizon --- well, I already baked in some mild conflict that's broadly reflective of the tensions between the ASSN/Coalition. It would also (hopefully) allow people, if they so choose, to play a Mormon character that isn't running entirely off of headcanon. I agree that Space Mormon is an inherently funny concept.

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[I partly used/stole the template from this thread because the current template seemed unsettling to me. I don't know what 'impact' having written lore on Mormons would have.] Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): Small Species: Human Type: Faction/religious organization Founding/Settlement Date (if applicable): 1830 AD in upstate New York as the "Church of Christ," current name began usage in 1838. Region of Space: In lesser or greater numbers in many human-settled regions, but primarily found in Sol. Short Description: A relatively large church. How will this be reflected on-station?: It won't be, because the SCC is a secular organization that doesn't favor any particular religion outside of providing an all-purpose chapel. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: There is a generalized lack of well-written lore relating to any presently extant religious organization. This is a taste of what I am capable of writing. I am willing to write similarly broad overviews of, I am not joking, every other religion. There's definitely a right way to do this sort of thing in a way that won't needlessly offend people. What I'm seeing on Aurora is a reversal of what I saw way back when on BS12, where the lore was there --- but very, very dumb. On Aurora, it just doesn't really exist. 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: I'll spare you the full history of Mormonism and just give you the basic run-down and some terminology. LDS - Latter-day Saint. Quorum - the highest governing body of the church below the President. - In LDS historiography and theology, Mormonism isn't a new religion (and it definitely wouldn't be seen as new by the 25th century, just relatively young) but instead the restoration of the ancient Christian faith, essentially in opposition to older, more established churches. Owing to certain cultural values and influences extant at the time of the church's founding (i.e, Swedenborgianism, seers, proto-spiritism), private revelation has always been important. This has allowed Mormonism to reform itself and, throughout the years, modernize to some extent. - In the early 19th century, a young treasure hunter, Joseph Smith Jr., was compelled to go to a particular hill in the region he lived in. Upon going to this location, an angel appeared to him and told him what most people know about Mormonism: start digging. Smith dug up golden plates and translated them via the Urim and Thummim, an ancient breastplate and pair of spectacles. Smith, who was mostly illiterate, transcribed what he allegedly read on the plates with the help of multiple people, such as his wife, Emma Smith, and his associates, Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery. One thing led to another and Smith was lynched by an angry mob, but by that point many people had been swayed by Smith's preaching and had become the first Mormons. - By the mid-20th century, Mormonism had become an established part of the American religious landscape, with the vast majority of Mormons living west of the Rocky Mountains in Utah, Idaho, and in adjacent states. Politically, Mormon men were targeted for recruitment by the State Department and in intelligence bureaus, primarily owing to their abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, adherence to traditional morals, and skill with foreign languages. Mormons were generally stereotyped as creepily nice people with large families; some held the erroneous belief that polygamy was practiced by mainstream Mormons, something that was generally untrue by that point and would become more irrelevant as the membership of fundamentalist LDS churches practicing plural marriage became smaller. High concept sci-fi stuff starts down here. - Given Mormonism's history and increased involvement in certain sectors of the United States government by the early 21st century, it was generally considered unsurprising that the vast majority of LDS church members were broadly supportive of the establishment of the ASSN in 2140. The church's general sense of apocalypticism, which had existed since the late 1940s, was (at the time) undergoing a lull following the tensions between the US and USSR in the mid-late 21st century. The establishment of the ASSN reverses this. Within the next twenty years, during the surge in interstellar colonization, the church undergoes two schisms owing to the Quorum's general support of the ASSN and loses one-point-eight million members. In LDS historiography, the mid-22nd century is considered one of the worst times to be a Mormon, albeit for reasons opposite to the norm: many people in the church, generally speaking, at all levels, did not trust the establishment of a one-world government, especially one that involved the USSR. - Colonization was an incredibly attractive prospect from the late 22nd century and onward. Earth's climate crisis and failing biosphere led to a great number of schismatic Mormons --- ones who, ironically, did not trust or like the ASSN --- participating in ASSN-sanctioned colonization efforts. The general idea was that the farther away you got, the better. The mainstream LDS church similarly supported colonization efforts, although the vast majority of members who left Earth did not go very far, generally staying within Sol. - By the late 23rd century, there are roughly a forty-six million people who refer to themselves as either Latter-day Saints or Mormons living in human-settled space. Of that forty-six million, five million are members of the increasingly dispersed and numerous schismatic churches that split from the mainstream LDS church following the establishment of the ASSN and now live primarily in the outer rim and on the frontier. - The Interstellar War breaks out. Schismatic churches in the outer rim and frontier support the establishment of the Coalition; the mainstream church has no stated opinion on it other than hoping for it to end as soon as possible. (It doesn't.) Given the distance, contact between the splinter sects and the mainstream church has been infrequent for a century, but their theology has remained remarkably similar: nothing too wacky has occurred. No one practices plural marriage on the frontier, outside of a handful of fringe churches with only a few thousand members in total. The main focus has remained leading a moral life and having a good relationship with God (and your local ward council.) - First contact did not lead to a widespread loss of faith, despite what militant atheists were hoping for. Most religious organizations have had two centuries to account for the possibility of alien life and Mormonism was no exception; the earliest musing on what contact with extraterrestrials would mean for the church dated back to 1971. LDS theology was, if anything, particularly immune to this kind of paradigm shift, given that it always accounted for the existence of other worlds and, by proxy, other forms of sentient life. (There was, nevertheless, palpable disappointment in the mainstream LDS church that the Nralakk Federation would not allow missionaries.) - Further contact with other forms of sentient life are met with excitement, given the general notion that the Unathi and Tajara are less advanced than humanity, not more advanced. Although distance and general restrictions make stereotypical missionary work unlikely (if not impossible), aliens living in Solarian space are given special attention. Extraterrestrials converting to any human religion is extremely rare --- it goes without saying that there aren't that many non-human Mormons. - As of 2465, there are roughly seventy-two million people in human space who consider themselves Mormon, whether religiously or culturally. Of that seventy-two million, nine million are members of sects in the outer rim and on the frontier. Missionary work is limited exclusively to human-settled planets and interstellar bodies; many missionaries can be found in the Eridani Federation and the Republic of Biesel, although postings to a missionary's stellar object of origin are far more common. - The church has no objections to non-human sentients becoming members; most Mormons in that category are IPCs owned privately by wealthy church members or the church itself. The number of extraterrestrial Mormons numbers somewhere in the low hundreds and form two distinct demographics, the first being non-human organic lifeforms living in Solarian space and the second being non-human organic lifeforms living in the Republic of Biesel. The mainstream church has no stated opinion on cyborgification but highly discourages members from voluntarily undergoing the process for medical reasons. - Mormons in Solarian space live primarily in the inner sphere; they are stereotyped as being middle-to-upper class and working either in government (particularly the Department of the Interior) or in accounting. They are generally considered bland and lacking in good taste. Mormons in the outer rim and on the frontier more closely adhere to pre-space age stereotypes of being unnervingly pleasant and having large families. - As of 2465, the current President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Michael-George Allred. There are as many schismatic sects in the outer rim and frontier as there are planets that have Mormons on them.

space is the final frontier and the final frontier of that final frontier is talking to people who you dont already know

i tried this. i don't think it works, but maybe i am wrong?

not 100% sure how dirty it is to bring up Lifeweb: Theater of Pain around here, but, what the h, i'm gonna do it. how it worked on Lifeweb: Theater of Pain was that the changeling absorbed people and left behind a huge, nasty sack filled with amniotic fluid. you could not move the sack. the sack grew out of the drained husk that the changeling left behind. what made this "cool" and possibly "good" was that after a handful of minutes, a changeling copy of the guy/gal who got drained would pop out of the sack. gross wet schlorping sounds. gross. and they could keep playing... as an evil alien doppelganger. this solves the "I have been murdered twenty minutes into the round and now I must sit and watch" problem. i do not know if it would solve the "The changelings inevitably end up 'going loud' (note: I hate this term. I also hate the terms "murderbone" and "chucklefucking") and slaying people/getting slain!" problem. that seems more structural, i.e, well you're giving me the ability to grow an awesome [PROTOTYPE] style Alex Mercer arm blade. why wouldn't i use the awesome arm blade. keep in mind that i am 1) genuinely not that smart 2) chronically ill/in pain in case this post is incoherent. but: you can easily solve the "I've been murdered early into the two to three hour round" problem by changing it from The Thing into Invasion of the Body Snatchers, i.e, by allowing changeling victims to come back as evil alien doppelgangers of themselves. "bob went missing 15 minutes ago... wait, there he is, but hes acting weird... why does he want me to check out this cool maintenance tunnel with him???" the issue with changelings basically not being stealthy and fighting the security team probably has a lot to do with the abilities they're given. why do they have arm blades?? thats like if you gave every traitor an energy sword and got surprised when nine out of ten times they end up using it. thanks for reading.

i was going to put a rod serling .gif here to start off the thread but i guess images aren't allowed on forums anymore in 2023 ad? weird and offputting. anyways, imagine, if you will, that you are playing janitor. having a great time. it hits the right part of your severely unwell mind that makes you have borderline crippling OCD. let's say there are a lot of bullet casings on the ground. "time to clean up," you think. you take your trash bag out. you need to click on the tiny little bullet casing, which is a huge pain in the rear because you use a trackpad and also your monitor is tiny. "oh no," you think. "this is horrible. what am i to do." basically to sum it up ideally if i want to pick everything up off of a tile using a trash bag, please let me just click on the tile. at the moment you need to click on an object on the tile, which can be difficult if the object (or rather objects) are tiny. thanks for reading

Six or seven sounds like it'd be a good number as the maximum; not big enough that mercs would steamroll the station, but not small enough that they're more or less impotent in the face of a fully staffed security department.

What if: instead of rats, tapirs...?

I've been a little busy lately catching up with my family while on break from school. I usually don't play very much SS13, either, to be honest.

I'm not questioning whether or not they should have access, I'm questioning whether or not their radios are strong enough to pick up signals from a station that's presumably a decent distance away.