Frances

Alright. Jackboot put me in charge of Skrell lore, and I want to get the ball rolling. Quite simply, there's a problem with the Skrell as they currently stand, which is that people don't play them a lot. I suspect a good reason for this is that although strange and unique, they're just not that fun to roleplay as. I'd like to think of ways to make them more enjoyable. Ideally, this goes towards making them more unique, not more human. IPCs are a good example of what I mean - they're the farthest thing we have from humans, and they're fun to play as because of their differences, not despite them. (And don't worry, I'm not planning to get rid of the "essence" of Skrells - I want them to remain our lovable squid scientists.) Before suggesting any big ideas, I'd like to start by seeing what you guys think. Basically, what do you like about the race? What do you dislike about it? As we don't have a lot of Skrell players, non-whitelistees are also strongly encouraged to contribute to this thread. Basically, all ideas are welcome.

Could we consider disabling ERT spawning altogether during nuke, and leaving it up to the admins? There's usually an admin around, and they should be able to read the game flow to decide when ERT intervention would be best suited to make the round more fun. I've noticed that ERTs tend to spawn very early into the rounds when they're called (usually just some 20-30 minutes after the ops make first contact), which makes the rounds super short. Allowing admins to delay those would broaden the range of gameplay nuke offers, essentially bringing more focus on crisis management, rather than "bad guys go in, bad guys go out".

Do you mean the Cassie drama? What happens on other servers stays on other servers, in my opinion. If someone does something bad on another server and starts doing the same thing here, knowledge of their history can be used against them, but if someone does something bad elsewhere and does nothing here, they shouldn't get punished for it. That specific situation was a pretty simple one, imo: there was a group of small friends who had their own private server, then other people came on, engaged in bad ERP on the server, and the initial group laughed at the ERP. I don't think it's an ethical breach - it's just ERP. A few things I noted, which led to me backing Cassie's group on this: The server was originally yes, really meant for something private. It was a group of 5-6 friends just having their own adventures. People from Aurora eventually started to come to it out of curiosity (and some of them were pretty rude), but Cassie never stated at any point that the server was meant to cater to Aurora regulars, nor that she was taking on any obligations or responsibilities towards them ERP wasn't allowed when the logs were taken. The logs were shared among a small group, not publicly spread to shame the involved individuals. The reason why this whole affair blew up was because of two parties: a person who decided to stir drama by sharing the logs from this group of friend, and Aurora admins who made an announcement out of banning Cassie. I think neither of those things were smart decisions, and neither are Cassie's fault. This is basically like if you ran a little game server, random people came on it and did something hilarious (in a bad way) and you laughed at it with your friends, then someone from your friends reported it to the authorities of a different place and said authorities made a big spectacle of the whole thing while banning you from their (unrelated) place. The whole "some of them were minors" thing is honestly quite negligible, considering there are I-dunno-who-many minors who participate in lewd chats all across the internet on a daily basis and the police/FBI doesn't get sent to deal with any of them. What I would have done was most likely nothing at all, while turning away whoever saw fit to post logs from Cassie's chat and suggesting they stop trying to stir trouble. If I personally felt like helping the dignity of the people involved in the ERP I'd discretely suggest to them they keep their ERP to Skype or ERP servers, rather than going on some random person's server to textfuck. Iiii think that should cover everything?

That's ironic, coming from someone who very much enjoyed playing an event alien who called everyone "bitch ass niggazz". And I'm pretty sure everyone enjoyed it, too.

I don't think I really try to contradict people to refute their arguments - that'd be an incomplete and frustrating resolution to a problem at best, and sophistry at worst I try to refute arguments directly, when I can. To use my post above as an example, I had information to share that Dea omitted from her comment. I don't think she posted with malicious intent, and it's really understandable that she'd overlook or forget some of the facts after such a long time, especially considering it was just one of many cases she dealt with as an admin, while it's something that touches me directly and thus something I remember better. And technically she's right about the whole thing, I'm not even denying that haha. The explosive resolution to our chemist antics was far from an ideal one, and I'd change a lot of things about it if I could - I just don't think the account that was given is representative of what truly happened, and it paints a particularly bad picture of the intents behind these events. Anyway! To answer your question... I spoke a bit of my intents as a mod applicant in the OP to this thread, though I don't mind expanding on them again. What I want, and the real reason why I enjoy doing this, is to help people. I want Aurora to be a server where people can have fun, where they can engage in the genuine interactions that make tabletop among a group of friends enjoyable: sometimes funny, sometimes cool, sometimes epic, but always surrounded by a sense that you're among friends and that everyone is there to have a good time. I want Aurora to be a server where people shouldn't have to be afraid of the staff or the players - where when people make a honest mistake they can expect to be met with friendly discussion about what went wrong, rather than a punishment and some angry curses. I think this requires a lot of effort both from the players and the staff (some of the mods/admins are too aggressive and enforce the rules too mindlessly, while some of the players have a bad habit of getting OOCly-aggressive when things don't go their way), but I think the best way to bring change is to show example. That's why what I always wanted was discussion. Friendly, reasonable, open discussion. When I get myself involved in issues, it's usually to give people a voice, or make them feel like they're not alone, especially when they're ignored by everyone else. If not, it's because I try to encourage someone to be friendlier than they are being (though this is more of a problem in-game and something I do in LOOC). I won't try to sell myself as a politician because politicians tend to lie a lot, but if you wanted me to sum up what my "desires" were I'd say that those are it. And I believe they're objectives which are 100% compatible with being a mod.

I'm afraid some of this is a vast exaggeration The event you're describing has essentially been removed from context, and is missing some essential details. While yes, it was an instance of chucklefucking with a friend, I feel like there are some facts that need consideration here: -We didn't remain absolutely silent as you say, but rather communicated people, although we might've sounded closer to Badger and Skinny Pete from Breaking Bad than we did to normal scientists -It was low-pop extended, which meant there was little need for chemistry, but I remember making a point to fill any chemistry requests so our cover as drug suppliers wasn't blown, so the accusation we ignored all requests isn't true -We spent a while trying to find distributors for our drugs. A Tajaran agreed to help us, then sold us out, leading to our arrest in the bar. At this point, I encouraged my colleague to "dispose of the evidence" by simultaneously consuming every pill we had produced, while myself doing the same, which is how we met our untimely demise. This was the most extreme action I think I've ever taken during extended, and I recognize it was wrong, though I believe I wrote myself into a corner, as having my chemist die from his own stupidity through a hilarious overdose seemed like a funnier and easier resolution to the conflict we created than forcing security to put us in cells and deal with us for the next two hours it would take for the round to transfer out. -Most of the long argument which I had with Viking didn't have to do with our specific actions - he believed that individuals should never self-antag, act like criminals, or intentionally break corporate regs during extended. -It's not like I'm literally unable to stop myself from acting like a mongoloid whenever I play on the server. I thought it was a fun thing to do, I knew it skirted with the rules (for god's sake I wrote those rules), and I stopped when an admin provided me with a genuinely decent reason why I should stop (which I already talked about before). This event was more than six months ago and isn't representative of my current contribution to the game, as I have started to play 100% straight, law-abiding goody two-shoes characters exclusively once again. I don't really blame you for still having those misconceptions, though, since you just came back to the server. I hope this is enough to provide some context. Tl;dr, I actually think that this is probably the worst thing I've done on the server, rules-wise, and it stemmed from what was essentially good intentions turned wrong by circumstances. It was a while ago, and I stopped creating risque situations since then because it makes people salty. Lastly, the accusation of metacommunication is false, unless you consider frequently playing with somebody you know OOCly to be metacommunication alone, because a lot of people do that I thought these were the exact same situations, though? I had information I thought was relevant to the IR, and I figured the best place to post it was on the IR where everyone could see it, not in a single person's inbox where the person can easily ignore, miss it, or just take three weeks to process it because they're away. I also don't think there's been given a good reason why people can't make OOC posts on IRs as long as they're relevant, because posts of people trying to rabidly defend their characters could be moderated, and immersion isn't a concern either as I've seen staff make OOC posts on the forum. Anyway, the precedent set by Doomberg essentially said "this kind of rule is badly formulated and can be altered". I don't know why it hasn't been changed yet, but I thought this could be posted without having to face technicalities such as "the rule is still standing because no one bothered to change it", although you also seem to be believing my latest post is of a wholly different nature - something I'd argue it is not.

Oh, and, yeah, I'm personally against it at the moment. The game is just too stacked against antags. You have a bored security crew of 5-6 people just waiting to catch someone most rounds, plus the rest of the station seems ready to fight for security's leftovers. Plus whenever it's nuke ERT usually gets called pretty quick unless the ops follow a very specific pattern of actions to disable command, leaving cult as the only gamemode where antags really get a chance to win, realistically. On top of that, antags opening with overtly hostile actions sometimes seem more likely to be met by players dropping everything to complain in LOOC rather than actual IC reactions, while security is pretty much free to unload into anyone that's valid (and nonlethal tasers are as much of a death sentence for your average antag.) That's a lot of difficulties for antags to surmount, and adding armed guards would be another big one. This is basically a project I'd like to see brought if antags were ever found to be too strong.

Well, being any kind of mod is about recognizing the intent of people in situations. If someone did something bad but meant well, you'd approach the situation very differently from how you would if they did bad and meant bad. And I think the atmos test shows a bit of lack of consideration for the intent of the people who partaked in it. Like, there's nothing wrong with wanting to raise conflict or staying true to your character's personality per se, but when that conflict has the effect of hampering one of the rare, player-organized events we see, it's kinda sucky for the people who actually tried to get together and organize/have the thing. And for that reason, I think going out of your way to have the captain punished goes a little too far, unless the captain really behaved like an ass to you or something else we're overlooking.

I'm sorry for bringing this up here, and, like... maybe it's not fully related to the app, but I just really wanted to know. And I guess it's related a little bit, maybe. Didn't that same RD of yours partake in an all-out arena brawl just a few days following the atmos test? And I'm not saying he shouldn't have, both were fun events and I think people had more fun experiencing them then they would have staying in their departments doing nothing for the sake of "station productivity" or whatever RP excuse, but I fail to see the consistency here. Like, your character doesn't like the idea of an atmos test that actually looked like something a workplace could do, because it's risky and not realistic RP, but organized gladiatoral combat is totally cool?

I've seen Bling mature and develop his roleplay to amazing levels since he first started playing in 2014. I'm really glad to still see him around, and it's definitely one of these "fuck yeah" moments when you look back at someone who used to be a noob and realize how awesome they turned out to be. Echoing what I believe to be the general sentiment here, but I also really think Bling would be a great fit for head roles.

Previous thread. I don't think there's anything wrong with bringing the suggestion up again as it wasn't denied for any obvious and unchanging reasons, and it's been a few months since we last talked about it.

I don't think it's very fair to equate nuke ops and geneticists to clowns. There is nothing inherently chucklefucky to nuke ops (tbh I'm a bit confused why you bring them up), and geneticists, while having a bunch of silly powers, can also pretend to do serious work. (I used to have my issues with genetics but I realized making the whole game super-serious is an outright impossible objective.) To use the notion of geneticists to further my argument, I don't really mind if silly things happen from time to time. It's actually quite refreshing, and I think most people would get bored if SS13 was 24/7 office simulator or big drama with people dying (which tends to make people mad anyway). Geneticists are sort of the terribly flawed, half-retarded yet true epitome to that. Some of them are really serious, some of them do incredibly funny things and some are plain annoying. Clowns, on the other hand, are the plain "in-your-face" chucklefuck. They have a designated silly outfits, silly equipment, and a designated slot for doing silly stuff. A big difference between clowns and other funny characters is that no other role is inherently designated for chucklefucking. And that's what makes some of those characters great, because it's a bit more believable, a bit more unexpected, and a bit less frequent. I'm happy with the amount of nonserious stuff that currently happens on the server. And I wouldn't mind clown-based events from time to time, though giving them a whole gamemode seems like a lot of effort for something people would get tired of quickly. Anyway, all of this is why I think clowns aren't that fun on HRP yet we can still have (and enjoy) outright silly stuff.

While most of Hive's points seem reasonable, I don't think you should start an argument of whether HRP is easier or harder to moderate than LRP. From my experience as a HRP admin, modding involves a moderate amount of work but should certainly be manageable for the average individual. I haven't adminned LRP, but from playing on LRP I can say that people tend to get equally salty, and that if you consider HRP modding no cakewalk then I doubt LRP is either.

That's a pretty reasonable explanation, and certainly helps put things into perspective. Especially this part shows you have good insight into what happened and why it went to shit, which is the explanation I felt was lacking before. I hope your post settles that matter for anyone else who had concerns about that incident - it does for me. Thanks for replying.

I'd love to see creative traits. Stuff like "your attacks hit harder and miss less often" would probably be unfeasible because everybody would pick those to minmax and be robust, but non-combat traits like those rrrrrr mentioned could be great.

Well, I tried to post an explanation on Delta's app - I don't really want to force a super long discussion of two third parties onto his app, though, so if you wanted to discuss this more you could send me a PM (you don't have to, though.) Something I didn't say but should mention is that my intent by doing this isn't to serve my personal agenda. I don't want for Delta not to be a mod, I just want this server to have good mods. I saw something that I felt was an issue, and so I brought it up. If Delta or the rest of the staff can refute it I'll be super happy - until then, I just believe it's something worth being considered as people look at his app. If that makes any sense?

((Hmm... I actually never read the OP closely until now but I did actually break the rules haha. While I didn't think people would find major issue with mild antagging - as has been discussed recently concerning extended rounds - and overarching canon antags (like characters who are super-spies but only do really bad stuff when they roll as antag) I don't really feel comfortable knowing that I went against some of the contest' explicit rules to get there. I mean, I'm fairly sure the rule exists mostly as to 1. prevent people like vampires from posting and 2. prevent people from doing some really insane things during, say, extended, and all I did was take pictures of people and break into a room of my own department so I could come up with a funny submission and help the contest along a little. But it's still unfair to the other people who have read the rule and have refrained from doing that because they hadn't been given permission. If the rule was amended then I'd be glad to do something minor like this again, but in the spirit of fairness, I'll be withdrawing my previous entry. Thanks for bringing it up, people.))

You're... actually right! I don't remember talking to you during any specific incidents, but there was a period of time a few months ago where I was playing joke characters and I ran into a very tough spot with the staff, neither of us being really able to solve the situation. I didn't have any malicious intents when talking to you guys, but the staff actually didn't really contact me about anything for a really long while (which led me to assume they didn't particularly care, so I played my balds with Halo and we engaged in mostly inconsequential chucklefucking), and then eventually a few staffmembers blew up and got really mad at some (honestly) very, very random things which surprised me as I'd much rather they have addressed the issue directly. Eventually, after maybe a month of this, I had a conversation with Tenenza and we finally figured things out. The staff I dealt with before were for the most part hostile, and the issues they attempted to discipline me for were mostly unfounded or unrelated to the chucklefucking (for example, communicating with another player OOCly to fix a bug, or making an obvious joke about having 300 characters in LOOC). I was, for the most part, waiting for them to realize they were off the mark and bring up the real issues. It sadly never happened with these original mods/admins - maybe I failed in reaching out to them and they thought I was just retarded. Anyway, I hope that explains things a little. I think it's not as much of a problem anymore, partly because aurora staff actually is doing better right now imo, and partly because I've actually picked up how to deal with angry staff a little (that situation was really new to me tbh). Lastly, I just want to reassure you that I don't have any special "terms" - yes, there's things I'd like to see done differently, but I think the chain of command is important, and general approval is important too. Without them, we wouldn't get anything done! So when Doomberg released unfavorable rulings in the past, and actually said it was his final word as Headmin, I did accept it, even if I might not have agreed and even if I might try to change his mind sometime later.

Better, probably. One issue with the forums is that they're so impersonal - and while I resort to staff complaints when I'm unable to communicate properly with the person I have issues with (with a few exceptions, such as a Doomberg complaint - I think - where I wanted to hear additional opinions), it's actually easier to settle things via chat. Rejoining the mod team removes this boundary, or at least gives me more options as to how to approach people (rather than having to make complaints or go through Skull.) I actually don't think that I have issues with the staff as a whole - simply with small, isolated incidents that I feel are important (as sometimes they're the symbol of bigger problems). I think I've been able to solve all the complaints I've had, save for one that involved Doomberg and Tish telling me off for a LOOC joke they found misleading (and the reason why such a silly thing ended in a complaint is because I was completely shut down when trying to discuss it in ahelps). I've also only written four complaints since August, counting one that was reported by several people. Most of my other posts in the complaints forums involve defending people or bringing attention to facts I feel have been ignored, but as a whole I post pretty much everywhere on the forums. As for tone, and creating a pleasant experience, I've done my best to remain neutral and pleasant on the forums (i can't resist memes tho) and I actually don't think I'd be causing anyone much trouble in msay, as I did admin for the server for nearly a full year and never had any truly unpleasant experiences with anyone else on staff, even when we disagreed. If there are members of staff who are currently wary about the prospect of modding with me, I'd implore them to give me a chance via trials before passing their judgment, and if you just wanna talk about why you have issues with me, my inbox is open and I'll be glad to listen.

Well, I think it's relevant because three months isn't such a long lapse of time, and it's something that had to do directly with how Delta handled banned users as a mod. If he claims he's changed and nothing contradicts that claim that's good, but his initial posts seems to be indicating he believed he was acting as a player, not as a member of staff. I believe there's an undeniable intricacy to the way mods express themselves in public regarding matters of their own server (yes), and if Delta fails to understand that then it could be rather bad (or could just be something we could talk about with him). As he's a very vocal person, it's an issue he's likely to encounter more in the future, and thus is worth special consideration. Also, what does the RP rating have to do with anything? (And sorry Delta, I'm not double-accusing you, just trying to explain my gripes to someone else.)

Thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated. I'll try to answer both points you brought up: -The only relevant information I cut out is age... which is literally the least important question in the entire app. Age can actually serve as a decent baseline when you don't know the person as it gives you a general idea of what to expect from them, but I've regularly interacted with most people in the community and I think everyone knows what I'm like at this point. Also, people that have given silly answers to much more important questions are currently on trial. -I'm curious, what do you mean by old things? And for what purposes?

Literally the only quote from you I see regarding that part of the incident is "that was me speaking as a player and not as a staff member", so I'm a little confused.

Not really. While it's pretty much universally accepted that calling that guy a fucknugget out of the blue was a pretty bad move, it's really more about your failure to reflect on it as a CM mod rather than an individual, as I have repeatedly stated in all of my posts haha. Like here: