Rabid Animal

The discord is private in that it's not the official discord. I have no desire to be a part of the official discord because of the history it's had as an extremely toxic corner of the community. I'm not barring anyone from entry, so if staff feels like they need to watch idc do what you want I'm not going to stop you. Beyond that; barring events like these with threats of insignificance if staff isn't directly involved leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Idk if that was your intention but sure, I'll play along: who do I need to contact, in specific, to get this cannonized.

<Posted around the habitation deck, and occasionally on the work decks, sits a flier> ATTENTION HORIZON CREW In collaboration with the Konyang Ecological Society, the SCC has agreed to conduct a biological survey of a wilderness area thought to be afflicted by the rampancy crisis. The purpose of this mission is to gather data on local wildlife populations in order to better understand the environmental impact of hivebot and rampant activity as well as survey the landscape for damage in the form of hivebot industrialization. <Below the opening paragraph are several infographics with blurbs of information> Why? The health of a planet's natural environments directly affects its population; should an environmental collapse be around the corner, the local government will need ample time to react and ensure such industries such as agriculture and aquaculture are not crippled. <A picture displaying some of the natural cycles created by native flora and fauna, and how it affects fish populations downstream, is included with this blurb> Where? The wilderness jungles of the Oshima islands, the survey will take place over three days. Day one will include a hike to a central location, where base camp will be set and volunteers will get settled in. <A basic map of the area is included, plotting a path from a designated landing site to a place high in the mountains; secluded. A few locations are marked in the area as points of interest> Who? Anyone is welcome to volunteer! The SCC offers a bonus in the form of 1,500cr (terms and conditions apply) for those who participate. Volunteers will be given equipment packages in order to assist in the operation and will be given specific tasks on site. Volunteers are expected to be in good physical and psychological health, outside of an extreme emergency - you will not be permitted to return to the Horizon until the mission is over. <An infographic explains the types of physical activity that will be experienced, as well as the types of weather conditions to expect> When? The 16th through the 18th, ensure you are signed up and your forms are filled out before the 15th. Volunteers are urged to contact Director Sasha Kaiser to sign up. All crew interested in attending will be required to submit a personal release form. <At the bottom of the flier is a row of tear off tabs, on them is Kaisers contact information and a URL to the Konyang Ecological Societies website> >>>>>>>>>>•••••••••••••••<<<<<<<<<<< OOC INFORMATION This event will be hosted through a private discord, you may contact me in character or over discord (50n00b) for invites to said discord. Each day I will run a "one shot" that will encompass the active parts of the mission. Afterwards, rp channels will be opened for downtime rp at the basecamp. My ideal is to run the active sessions on Thursdays (18th, 25th, and 2nd.), and give people ample time to hang out in-between. This may change depending on availability for those who contact me, I'll give more details out as we get closer. Times are TBA depending on availability. If you want to be included, but can't make time for the active one shots, feel free to hang out regardless! You can be a basecamp jockey for all I care, the point is to have fun! The active sessions won't be particularly crazy, expect fairly tame gameplay with minor if any conflict. Don't worry if your character isn't a science geek or would seem out of place for something like this: essentially we're doing a community science project and the types of things you are expected to do ICly should be accessible to the layman. Tldr; we go camping, spacemen style. Ask any questions you have in the thread. I'll open the discord to the public as we get a little closer.

This is a perfect opportunity to actually tie the research department into the setting of the server; as they are and do feel very irrelevant. You'd think doing these types of missions would absolutely be in their realm of play: almost always. So when I read the bit about "how do we make this not security centric" I really don't know how to feel about it anymore, it sets this precedent that everything will be default security centric. I KNOW this was addressed in the faq, I just don't like that it's already a concern. Antags now feel bad because of security balancing issues, and this is seen by the common comment "x round type is so much better with low sec or low med." I cannot fathom a scenario that this gamemode will solve the issue of antags feeling bad when going into it, it's already designed around security. Beyond that, implementing something like this will no doubt lead to older gamemodes getting shafted from lack of maintenance, already the case but made worse by the focus on missions. We also start running into scenarios where people who would rather stay on ship are completely excluded from mission rounds, something to keep an eye on during testing I suppose. So my concerns are; - if this isn't including the whole crew in some way, what's the point. You can focus certain away sites for certain departments but that doesn't feel good if you're not playing the "right" department. - how do we balance security so they don't just steal the round type like they have done in the past and present? - what will happen to the old round types going in to this, and for people who prefer them, how will they be maintained if at all? Antag rounds as is involve the whole crew by design, but security has been so over balanced that they cannot try to interact with more than a few people without getting shot down 15 minutes in. Fixing current issues before deciding to completely redesign the gameplay loop feels like a better use of time, and adding more involved away sites can test the waters for an idea like this. I think regulars are less interested in playing antags MOSTLY for the reasons above. Ofc canonicity ties in a bit; but when the examples are "zombie outbreak" are missions /really/ going to be cannon? Beyond that how much reconning are people going to be doing with violent missions, regardless of how plausible things are? Is cannonicity really the problem? Plus, conflict drives narratives, regardless of if you decide to keep those conflicts cannon or not. All in all, I think it's a not a baaad idea, but it would really suck if it gets implemented and everyone just votes secret anyways after the "new gamemode" awe dies down. And it would suck just as bad if it meant the good things we do have get neglected, for a new gameplay loop people may or may not like. Sorry if this is a mess, typing it out on my phone

I think the best thing to do here is remember that behind every 2d spaceman is a real person. I hardcore had this issue when coming back from an extended break, I managed to get through it but man - the first week or so was pretty unfun and I really struggled to remember why I came back at all. I can see why as a result we really hardly get new players. So be a bro, turn yourself away from that conversation you've had with the same 5 people and will continue to have with those people in many rounds to come: and see whats the deal with the new guy. You might turn their round around.

Had the chance to play with Jackdaw, very active and communicative. Didn't really overstep and overall a team player. Almost made my RD change their opinions on IPC heads 😏/s +1

Nah I get all this, I made that as a devil's advocate point and pretty much set it completely aside further down in my post. I like conflict like that, its okay to feel discontent at work, but ehh that's less the point of this thread. You can still have awards and whatnot.Being acknowledged is cool, I think the best away to do that is maybe the lore articles and wrap up events that talk about everything that happened. I also think the death policy is a net negative, so many get reconned anyways and I've seen some genuine vitriol appear because people were denied such retcons, if imagine that fucking sucks to be on the receiving end of that. I'm glad garn brought it up because it's also part of the issue here, me thinks. The blood lust that this policy generates is comical and just as derailing as "someone was kind of silly"

I'm not sure how I feel about canonicity in the way you've presented. I think it would be cool to look back and see names and such associated with certain events, see who died, who had a huge impact, etc. But on the other hand it is somewhat alienating. I don't play cannon events, I think they're a good way to get killed and I'm too much of a salty mofo to experience enjoyment out of that. If I die I want it to be on my own terms; when I'm ready for the narrative I'm trying to express to end. That's my own preference, and given the amount of "throw away" characters you see pop up for events, I'm sure other people share the sentiment. The moment people start getting their name plastered all over the ship because they're robust enough not to die, and have had their characters for nearly 10 years, it begins to feel even more pointless to bring newer characters along, because you'll always be overshadowed by what x did 18 events ago. Now, is that a possible overanalysis of what could happen? Yeah, probably. We saw a lot of that in the memorial thread, and while I mostly disagreed with the points being made there: here I am making similar arguments. This is why I'm conflicted, I suppose. I dont think cannonicity is bad. I think the idea of the SCC refusing to acknowledge its own employees is a great point of conflict, in character. It makes sense in the dystopic system we're supposed to be a part of. The corporations aren't the good guys here, as much as we wanna pretend they are. Now all that said, there's probably a happy medium somewhere. I think, from the perspective of someone who doesn't engage with these events, some wind down would go a long way. When the last rampancy event happened, it really felt as if every little changed - no one reacted beyond "we won! Back to work as usual ..." Seeing completely non-violent events to round out and wrap up the ending of an arc would solidify the impact we had. The SCC has a ceremony to award people involved. There's a celebration in point verdant, maybe multiple. We engage in the clean up process. This also goes a long way to catch people up who, like me, don't really feel the need to play these hyper violent rounds, or even people who feel they didn't have a place in those rounds. (Let's be real, there was almost no point in attending the last event if you weren't a combat character) Hell, even in the first example you get that recognition without the need to map it in somewhere or solidify it to the wiki. So I don't know, maybe that's a little too much rambling from me; but that's my two cents.

I didn't get the chance to play yesterday but that's hilarious lmfao

BYOND Key: 50_N00b Game ID: several, I don't have them, dates below Player Byond Key/Character name: Muko Suand Reason for complaint: It's been brought to my attention that Muko Suand has been actively shit talking me in deadchat. I'll be clear; I play an extremely abrasive character. I wholly expect some amount of backlash because of that, but at the end of the day it seems to be fine for people actually involved. This, however, leeches into the realm of extremely petty winging for the sake of trying to put me (and as I've come to realize, others) down. I feel like this started after he bothered me a few times in LOOC about doing xenobotany as RD.1 It's not a stance I really understand, if he wants to play a role he can join in and I'll hand the lab off, I'm not hogging the lab in an attempt to prevent people from playing the role. Since the LOOC thing, I muted ghosts and ignored him. (for clarity, I don't think this interaction is problematic, I just don't like to use LOOC for this kind of banter personally, hence muted) Afterwards, some days later, I was informed about the deadchat stuff. 2 It immediately bothered me on the basis that it was clear he wasn't complaining about the character in a real sense, Sasha is a cunt! That's the point. If you wanna complain about that go for it, but then we get into "a bit weird that he's 50" and "he's zavod" as if either thing matters. I was also told he does this to other characters3. Then, today, he just seems to be at it again. I concede this is far more minor, simply saying "RD shouldn't do xenobot,"4 but it's just getting on my nerves and frankly he's just being a dick at this point. I don't really know if any of this is serious enough to warrant a complaint, but I feel like that kind of pessimism is horrendous and if he's hounding other people for just existing as well, I don't think that's great for the community. 1; (03/15/24 ~11:00PM MST) 2; (03/23/24 ~1:00AM MST) 3; (03/23/24) 4; (03/30/24 ~11:00PM MST) TLDR; As minor is it may be, I feel like Muko Suand is breaking rule one; don't be a dick. Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? I tried to ahelp it during the round cs1-aVIV, however it was getting late and after waiting 20-30 minutes I logged off without a reply. Mel DMd me after and said to make a player complaint. Approximate Date/Time: as this spans multiple days, all dates and times are attached to the screenshots

I don't think removing RnD will help science, I took a break and on return I found it so odd that the machinist took over a lot of their responsibilities, the role keeps getting gutted and their things given to other roles and we wonder why people don't play science. If anything the machinist should go back to just doing robotics work, or be moved back to science. I touched on all of this in the expeditions thread so I won't repeat myself too much here.

Having a plaque, even if it doesn't name anyone, memorializing those who died for the company seems in character for a dystopian mega corporation. It's obviously meant to appeal to all the people upset about it, without being a real commitment to righting any wrongs associated with those people's deaths. The average spessmen would fall for it, it's just what they're all conditioned to expect at this point. Beyond that, the old station had plaques all over I don't see why the SCC would be against doing something like that. Let people do their pity rp?

oh yeah absolutely, I meant a more; "for the future" type thing, but I think your suggestion as is, is a great start.

Tacking onto this, if we wind up keeping this, as per a suggestion in the expeditions thread, we should absolutely have some away sites only accessible via telescience. Sounds neat! Would love to see it get some use again!

I was mostly posting in reference to the topic of the thread, and actually agree with most of your points here though. I'm generally against it, hence trying to hammer in the idea of making it more of an addition rather than a replacement. Moving all of science towards exploration will interest people for a time, but yeah - in the long run its not great. The bluespace probing is an excellent idea and brings telescience back to relevancy. I think something like that also allows for some interesting away sites not limited by the lore of whatever sector we're in. I know this is beyond the scope of this thread and even not 100% something great for aurora, but Goon has an ARG relating to telescience, and it makes it feel far more interesting to play round to round as theres a persistent puzzle to be solved. General probing is fine? I'm not sure exactly how it'll help mining or others because of the presumed setup time, mining will already be long gone before we're able to discern useful information. That said, you could expand a bit on that idea to spark interest in doing planetary survey. Xenobio is complicated...I think theres a lot of really cool things you could do with it that require a lot of coding. Some map changes are a good way to start, and perhaps giving them a pseudo genetics system wherein you can clone xenofauna using samples gathered in the field? Obviously thats a little half baked, and probably deserves its own thread. All in all, most of science is just RP, so its not the worst thing - if you want mechanical complexity to keep people occupied, build on the genetic system to modify your samples or something? Xenoarch would benefit from having more of a separation between artefacts and anomalies, where the former are more or less what we have, and the latter can have tie ins to the other science roles. Having crossplay is always desirable imo, because I think one of the huge issues with science is that its not only an extremely RP based department, but its extremely difficult to justify hanging out with your peers if you know nothing about their research. And example of this could be an anomaly that resembles a large flower and spreads vines around when its active. Xenobotany then would have a reason to team with archeology and do RP around it. Lastly, re; exploratory chem. I think as it was, its dead. I don't think bringing back the old system will do any good. I think giving each role in science a set of chemicals they can use in exploratory chem is another way to bring the department together, and I think that would be a better use of it than admin tier overpowered bullshit with 50 steps to make. Once again referring to goon, they've had exploratory chem for years and people love that shit, and most of their recipes are not anything groundbreaking or ridiculous either, its just FUN to discover things and then play with them and figure out what they do. This is pretty much the crux of everything wrong with science. Polishing everything we have and updating those systems will do a lot for the department.

obligatory reviving a dead post here; I don't think taking things away from science in any capacity is a good way to attract new players to the department. It hardly gets additions, which is a big reason its so dead, removing features I can only imagine will make that worse. On top of that, science is already supposed to be expedition focused? They have the intrepid, though in recent days people seem to forget that yes - the intrepid is sciences ship, it (should) only exist for away missions, which is historically something the RD organizes. The issue at hand isn't that the department isn't expedition focused, so much as the away sites provided are either very combat focused or, as it is with our current sector, completely absent. The most obvious and easy solution is to map more away sites, and make them appear more frequently. The new away sites should be science focused in almost their entirety, if I as the RD have to try and wrangle a person from each department because its REQUIRED not because its FUN, then it just gimps any chance of those missions ever happening - as is the case at the moment. Getting a group of science bros together to explore some wild ruin or do some detailed survey should be the expectation, NOT the exception. So then a few things; 1. We can aim to make expeditions more department wide by giving everyone in science access to the intrepid, and accept the fact that the ship is their toy, not a bus for people to ask rides on. If people want to use the intrepid, they can play science. This has the intended effect of allowing the department to feel more exploratory without detracting from the features already available to them. ADD DO NOT REMOVE 2. Give the roles given access above the opportunity to actually do things on their respective away sites. Expand Xenobiology to have a holding area for non-slime xenofauna.1 Give them features and toys relating to the study of said fauna. Give xenobotany the same thing, allow them to take samples of the plants that are planet side. Someone already mentioned this above, and it seems bay already has these features in some capacity, its OKAY to port stuff. In the same vein, they're not EXPECTED to do these things, if people wanna be a lab jockey, then BY ALL MEANS, LET THEM. 3. And, finally, do not remove RnD from science. I'm not sure why people think this is a good thing considering removing robotics was one of the worse things to happen to the department. Asking to take away things from science because you do not want to play science is frankly a terrible idea? If you want to simplify it, thats whatever, RnD takes 10 minutes to setup; some people find it tedious to do, and thats fair. Science depends heavily on roleplay, enable this with gameplay, I can lists things forever and ever on how to do this but thats not what this thread was about.2 I want to reiterate, again, that taking anything away from science at this point will not help the department in the long run. I also want to reiterate the idea that having science have exclusive access to !fun! things is how you get people to play the department.3 I'm not sure if that was particularly clear, but if people want to play with sciences toys, they can play science, do NOT lend their gameplay to other departments because people feel that these features are not getting used enough. The intrepid is theirs, RnD is theirs, etc, etc. 1 cages are currently really fucking broken, fix them so said fauna can actually be transported? Also man idk who the fuck remapped xenobiology but they have never played the role and its painfully obvious, the lab needs a remap. 2 things like bringing back exploratory chem, making microscopes do something for science, allowing fauna or even certain antags to be biopsied with unique results, so many things. 3 a lot of the fun things science has at the moment is barred from any kind of use because the rules prohibit human experimentation, and theres no other way to apply those toys. Loosen up or implement other ways to use said toys? idk

Another gap, another small dump - stuff is mostly 2023 with one more recent couple of my own characters Some commissions / other peoples characters

Yeah tbh idk why the somagun isn't jacked, it takes rnd to make anyways so why not make it actually useful. Still on the fence about having stuff be pre-researched.

It's been a while since I've played xenobotany so I should verify myself but a much faster way to get the genes is comparing two wildly different plants, not mutating one plant till the gene you want to find gets changed. I do recall it only taking about 20-30 minutes to get all the genes down when I played it last. That said, idk - on one hand making science easier lowers the bar for more people to play it which is good, on the other I think the real issue with xenobotany is lack of interesting mutations and making the 'endgame' easier to get to makes that much more obvious.

Thank you everyone for the kind words! Weaselscribe; Thank you for giving me some feedback as well. I completely understand where you're coming from, I think from your perspective it's very clear the secoff walked away from this without punishment and the ops manager was too out of the loop to help you with the cargo tech. Just to give you some peace of mind, the officer was told to return to duty as a security incident seemed to be brewing and half the department was on an away mission. They were told they'd be charged with mistreatment of a prisoner and a report would be filed, but to return to work for now. RD is not really in a position to be doing this themselves, so it was all very circumstantial in my eyes. I'm very much still gauging what lines I'm permitted to step over when I'm the only command available, or even when I'm just the one people are asking questions. I'll admit I probably should have just had the cargo tech dealt with then and there, but hey - its a learning experience. Thank you for bringing up your concerns and I'll make sure to keep them in mind in the future!

I love to see Ren on the manifest, he's fun to interact with in the short sessions I do so, and I hope to find more reasons to engage with them. I don't really have any experience with NM_s other characters, but I'm happy to give a +1 based on what I've seen.

Melteshonok writes creative characters that genuinely inspire me to step out of my comfort zone. I've yet to play directly with his captain, but having observed a few rounds with him, the character feels perfect for the role, assertive in all the right ways and does well to drive the narrative of a round. This is a +1 from me.

Thanks for the feedback! Sasha is definitely an abrasive character, and I realize I was stonewalling by leaning into that a little too hard. I'll keep that in mind for the future and try to encourage gimmicks more. I appreciate the comment.

BYOND key: 50_n00b Discord Username: 50%N00b#4606 Character names: How long have you been playing on Aurora? Actively, since around 2021 Played on and off occasionally since 2018ish(?) Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? Once, for calling someone out publicly when I should have approached an admin privately on the matter. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame? Heads of staff can steer a round for better or worse, their power over the crew is even more absolute on the Horizon than it was on the Aurora and so their leadership is more essential than ever. They are the first line of communication between departments, as well as the driving force behind the individual department goals - be that the discovery aspect of research to the maintenance aspect of engineering. They are there to be a figure to look up to and rely on during all of operation. Heads of staff also exist in part to drive the narrative of a round, and this involves creating appropriate responses to antagonist action while not outright hindering them. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them? Be a role model for existing and new players, many of my responses above apply here as well. I have ideas for science specifically to try and garner more crew interaction, and I'd like the opportunity to try them and learn from those experiences to provide a fun playing environment for the crew. Explain how the recent events in the Spur changed your character and how they came to be employed on the SCCV Horizon. I am planning on using Sasha Kaiser for this role, he is a Visegrad native whose career and livelihood was flipped on it's head following the collapse of the Solarian Government. Having been affiliated with dissonant political groups made him feel like staying on Visegrad was unsafe as the local government became more militarized as the seat of the SSMD. With all that in mind, he left his home and took on a contract with Zavod - intending on pursing a Director position later on; ie - now. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? For now I just want to give RD a shot, I may try other roles in the future - but I'd like to see more engagement from science and it seems like a good time. I want the department to have more reasons to engage with the crew, and that is something that is more accessible with a persistent RD 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: Sasha Kaiser - RD 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? Yes Extra notes: I'm not extremely active, and mostly play on the weekends. It might take me some extra time to gather feedback.

lly2 has always been a joy to play with, and I have an interest in his take on IPCs. consider this a +1

To add onto all that; If you're expecting people to waltz up to YOU to roleplay, that's not how this works - it's always on the player to create engagement and the same will be said for this. The librarian will have good luck getting people to come over if they talk on the radio, print ads, ask people to come by. They can't just sit at the desk and twiddle their thumbs as if something will happen when they do so. The same logic can and will apply to the gym role. So the answer to "What does this substantially change?" is someone who, hopefully, has the foresight to put effort into the role and give people more things to do, and not just sit around wondering why there's still no engagement.