Frances

I would argue that from an IC perspective, I highly doubt that the most advanced AIs of the universe would all be named after murderous, semi-psychotic fictional AIs from late 1900s movies. It's more of an OOC/roleplay concern, but even IC-wise, I can see some strong arguments against it.

While we have a rule against reference/pop culture names for human players, I noticed that we don't for synthetics. While I never gave this much thought until now, I suddenly realized that I don't see exactly why we don't have such a rule, when imo we should for the same reason we do for all other players, with little to no downsides. Having every other AI be a SHODAN or a HAL 9000 frankly gets old, and so does having borgs pretending to be Robocob, especially when these are almost always the mark of poor roleplayers, not good ones that can execute the references in a satisfying way. Passing a rule on AI/borg names would at the least encourage people to come up with more creative synthetics personalities, as well as curb down on some of the poor roleplay we've seen. The only argument I can think of against it is that it could discourage people from playing AI, a position which is already rarely player - to that, I'll retort that most players who are genuinely interested in playing AI are already invested in either the game aspects of the role (in which case your AI's name matters very little), or have their own original AI personalities. For the few that are actually intent on playing whatever AI from pop culture there is, it isn't excessively difficult to create an expy character, and simply change your AI's name, at least. So I suppose, let's hear your thoughts. A rule on AI/Borg names, do we want it?

The question is, would anyone enjoy playing this job? We already have enough trouble getting people to play chef (because few people care about eating food, thus there's no chef, thus people care even less - it's a vicious circle), would adding a job whose dependency relies entirely on two playergroups being present (a chef being interested in making food, and a reasonable amount of people being interested in eating it) really make for an enjoyable experience? I'll add that assistants can already perform this job, if they so wish. The black closet in the lockers has formalwear, and they'll be able to request waistcoats from the bartender (and chef, I think?), should they wish to dress up and become waiters/waitresses. The functionality is already there, I don't think there's much of a purpose adding a job title just for it. Though, again, this might actually make players who hadn't considered the role interested in it? Much in the way librarians can also be journalists, adding a few extra roles/titles to assistants could prove interesting. What else would they be besides waiting staff, though?

Application denied due to lack of votes and failure to meet guidelines.

Application denied due to inactivity and failure to meet guidelines.

Since I see a lot of votes without any constructive criticism here, I'd like to remind all that we're no longer counting those, as per our whitelist rules revisions. This includes Blue's vote (a member should get whitelist simply because they're a regular with no other reason stated), and subsequent votes agreeing with him. Seriously, you guys should know this by now u_u

Not at all? This is an extra chance that players are given to justify themselves, as well as take in feedback (because the purpose here is improvement when possible, not simply punishment), and it gives the rest of the community an opportunity to weigh in on the situation. All of the drama I've seen so far was created by users who were the targets of complaints arguing in a ridiculous manner, with their arguments being repeatedly shot down. In the end, the final decision is left up to the server staff. But since this isn't a clear case of "you broke x rule, you get bant", and sometimes community input will actually help the player more than a ban will, we run these player complaints before finalizing which actions to take against the player.

Just popping in to say, Unless you can explain directly how Xander's behavior had a direct impact on your own, that's hardly a valid justification. And it comes up in every player complaint. It's not because other people do bad things that you gotta do them too. Haven't been present during any of the reported incidents, so carry on.

One of the jobs of admins is to oversee events - developers and moderators should not use their powers to intervene directly in the game, unless given permission by an admin. It's not uncommon for admins to promote trusted staff during a round to let them run their own events (I've seen it happen once or twice with a few non-admin staff including devs and mods), but this is usually done in a more organized way. Given the very low pop, though, I think I understand the call. This feels to me like a honest mistake.

You may carry on playing with the aurora community in four more days. Unless you can come up with a better reason for which we should lift your ban early (of which I can think of none), I think this is justified. Learn your lesson, don't do stupid crap like that again, and you can keep playing with us just fine.

I just wish people would roleplay hunger more. Whenever I play, I usually make an effort to go grab a bite from the kitchen at some point, if only for the sake of encouraging the chef. It's something that doesn't take much time, helps for your /own/ immersion, and shouldn't only be done because you want to grab food with your best science buddy in the odd round.

Repairing the armory could've waited, but securing the area is something that should've been done at some point. Anyway, I still disagree. I think sending your security force in small patrols against an unknown number of well-equipped assailants is a very bad decision in any scenario. Patrolling in pairs would've at least been slightly less risky, but when the security force is this small, I think the best course of action would be to regroup everyone in a safe location (the bridge) where they can respond to calls quickly. If anything, send the borgs to patrol maintenance, because they're more expandable than people, and a single person coming onto a group of experienced hostiles in maintenance is probably going to end up getting killed. (Well, IC. Nuke ops are supposed to create more interesting RP scenarios than that, but that would be everybody's assumption in-game.) Declare code red, set a forward base from the bridge, maintain contact with every department, and send occasional patrols to check on departments. Keep an eye on hallway cameras, have the borg patrol maint or hallways. That's about all I can think of. I understand all of that isn't easy to come up with under stress, especially when doing it for the first time. I'm mostly putting it out here for future reference. I'm personally not for having Silver's whitelist removed, but I think the attitude you present when dealing with these first few issues (having fucked up) matters for more than the nature of the issues themselves. As long as he shows maturity when handling problems brought up by others, as well as a true willingness to improve, that's excellent by me.

There were a few officers (at least two, HoS, Captain). I never saw the laser rifles of the weapon crate distributed, only redundant tasers and stun batons - I believe it would have been fairly easy to get an engineer to at least repair the armory (for once the weapons are recovered, I don't see why you would want to leave it like that), and not everything in it was taken, only weapon lockers. Again, I don't see in what kind of universe it makes sense to send individual officers against an unknown force armed with lethal weaponry. You check station cameras, and regroup your officers if you don't have many. Captain, HoS (both with their pistol), with two officers with rifles and a sec borg makes a much more efficient detachment than (lol you guys just go patrol as normal). (Though things granted, idk what the captain was even doing at this point.) Does anyone agree with me?

But, I don't get it. There's an unknown intruder that stole all of your station's weapons (and the CC faxes we got said multiple intruders, as well as the fact that one person taking all of the guns seems pretty unlikely) and 1. You don't even bother to look into the armory, taking the AI's word that it's empty, so there's nothing to do there, and 2. You divide your security force into single-man patrols armed with tazers, against unknown, possibly aggressive intruders whose very purpose so far was to take the station's weapons. (Are you expecting your solitary sec officers to win?) Besides that, the rest of that post is a bit better. I don't understand how the entirely of sec could overlook Nasir and leave him in the brig for an hour and a half (HoS included), but yeah, as a head your job is to make sure incidents like that don't happen if your department is shit (and as captain, if your HoS is shit). You really need to start taking responsibility if you want to play as a head - I haven't seen it happen in-game, and even here, it's happened way too late. How can you expect to actually be a responsible leader if we have to coax an apology out of you OOCly when you make a mistake?

I don't like replying to posts by dissecting them into small points (unless somebody else does it first), but I feel like it's the best way to address a few things I wanted to point out with your reply. So here goes. First, you must remember that by brigging someone, you actually have a responsibility towards them to give them a fair brig time (OOCly), and not leave them RP-starved for too long. There might be some complications, but you should never leave people in a cell for over an hour because "you had to go deal with stuff". I believe that puts you at fault here, since you were the one responsible for the brigging. I also don't understand how people "bothering" you prevents you from addressing a prisoner you have brigged for over an hour, especially when you're the captain, and can simply order them off. (To release the prisoner they wanted you to release, furthermore.) Being in a bad mood does not make you any less accountable for your actions. If you were having a bad day, then it was your responsibility to avoid playing the most difficult and stressful position on the station for your very first time as a head ever, and then getting upset when you were called out for having done certain things wrong. These are the sort of frustrations which should be communicated immediately, and not kept bottled in, as they do not foster anything but hostility and further miscommunication. I rarely see people call to staff accountability, but I can assure you that it's something we take very seriously, and that admins will actually use restraint when dealing with situations in which they are personally involved so players don't feel like they are abusing their powers. Additionally, keep in mind that there are multiple members of staff online at any given time, and that our actions are discussed and validated as a group - so there's always a neutral opinion involved. I believe in this case, the attempt was to deal with this incident as we would have if any other player were involved. The only true difference I can think of is that we see these events more often when they happen to staff, because, we're staff. So we try to deal with everything we can catch, but we're not omniscient, and people don't always report incidents to us, whereas we can catch all the ones we witness ourselves. That's one point I can agree with. Lots of people have a kneejerk reaction to "omg racism bad" (not saying that's what happened here), and while I still think that heads should avoid blatant abuses of power (because it becomes hard to draw the line between a bad head and one that's abusive in fun ways), racism really wasn't the issue here. It was the general neglect towards the issue, leaving the player in the brig for a needlessly long amount of time, and basically ragequitting on roleplay. Finally, to address that. Your armory has been breached, and there's now an unknown number of hostiles with the ability to take down reinforced walls from space running around with all of your station's lethal weaponry. Give me a scenario in which the best course of action is to send off your security force in one-man patrols, and tell them to "look for the guys who took the weapons", basically proceeding exactly as they were before. (Oh, and not bothering to check inside the armory.) Because that seems like extremely poor leadership, if not neglect. Also, I have to disagree with this one. I believe Silver was in full control of all the deciding factors in these situations (his mood vs decision to play, his ability to take or leave a player in the brig, his decisions and the resources put at his disposition as a captain and HoS), and while a lack of experience might be to blame here, I do not think that anything was really "out of his hands".

Would like to add that I feel like Silver completely lacks direction or initiative as a head. While I think this could be attributed to being new, the fact remains that during a nuke round in which he played HoS, after the armory was raided and all weapons taken from it, I witnessed him going "whatever, patrol and try to look for the people who did this, we can't do anything anyway". I get making bad calls relating specifically to being in charge. But not doing anything while being in charge is kinda bad. It's like having no HoS at all.

There are two kind of people who breach the windows in perma. Griefers/chucklefucks, who we can easily ban for complete failure to RP a sense of self-preservation, and people organizing legitimate prison breaks. Either way, I don't see a need to remove the windows from perma.

I definitely think that this was a shitty situation for everyone involved, but the way I see it, there weren't any fuckups big enough to justify taking any disciplinary action. It sounds a lot more like Constantine having a very bad day. Whitelist strips come for people who fuck up majorly and demonstrate either no understanding of head responsibilities, or make no efforts to improve their roleplay. Given that intent to do well was obviously here, and that Jackboot actually cooperated with staff when contacted, and expressed himself clearly, I really wouldn't hold it against him. Was putting Samuel (Brage's character) in perma instead of processing before giving him any charges or interrogating him a mistake? Yes. Was assuming the airlocks in perma were the result of a fire alarm and not a breach and going ahead with opening them instead of checking with engineering or the station AI a mistake? Yes. Was sending Samuel to medbay without an escort or even cuffs (which forced a doctor to straightjacket him, as he was a murder suspect and potentially dangerous) a mistake? Yes. But none of these things come from malicious intent, or not giving a shit. I believe this may be a story of why procedure exists, as pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong, but these look like learning mistakes. More care should be put in situations like this in the future. But the consequences that came from negligence were hardly predictable ones - being straightjacketed, for example, happened because no security escort was present. Should one have been dispatched, prioritizing this situation (a prisoner dying) over whatever else security was dealing with (which from what I've seen was nothing that urgent), sure, but I don't think that's anything that you should seriously hold against a new and learning HoS player, even if the consequences were unfortunate.

I'd like to see you expand a little bit upon the suggestion. Right now, the way this is presented, I don't understand why players couldn't already do that in game, of their own volition? I mean, blackmailing is just, it's roleplay. There's nothing special that you need to do it, if anything ask an admin for permission and you're set. Edit: Derp, it's the ability to dispense equipment. Well, idk. I'll think about it more and make a post later.

Wish the ban description would've been a bit more... descriptive. Anyway, a few facts, since I was there. You were playing a geneticist. You stole an ID, broke into Toxin Storage (an area you normally do not have access to), and then started opening canisters, before trying to set them on fire with a welder. While you have an interesting definition of "playing around a closet with spare canisters, not trying to destroy anything" (especially since the canister that was moved out of the way and fully opened happened to contain plasma), I'd like you to explain to me how exactly that constituted heavy-roleplay, and how you can steal someone else's ID, break into one of the areas that contains some of the most dangerous equipment on the server, and open the one container that happens to contain plasma, all of that by accident. Figure this out, and then we can talk more.

During what would have been an otherwise uneventful round, a griefer, unremarkable in all aspects, decided to loot and dump down disposals our beloved moderator Halorocks22's SSD sec officer, Baldric Catleay, killing him. Rather than simply brushing it off as another random crime to be ignored, the server's population, to my greatest surprise, decided to arrange a funeral service for the deceased officer, following the initiative of Milo Hachert, our round's HoS. What followed was one of the most amazing events I've ever witnessed in SS13. I've never seen a SS13 funeral before. To see such an event executed with such... spirit, was quite simply amazing, and honestly one of my best roleplay moments on Aurora, even though I didn't participate in it myself. I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone involved: Commissar_Drew, XanderDox, Jackboot, Jboy2000000, Erik Tiber, WAEvans316, and A Runaway Turtle. I figured it was worth making this thread to highlight how great that funeral was, as well as share with others what members of our server can achieve.

Some crazy ideas are better left unexecuted. I have to regularly jobban or warn people because they think they can do things like roleplay crazy detectives that paint the floor and throw guns in disposals, or insane characters that throw a fit and get fired from their jobs every round. Are these crazy ideas? Yes. Do they have their place on a mostly serious server? No. There is such a thing as safety protocols, yes. So this is the main thing that irks me. We give you the option to play as a 17-year old captain with spiky green hair. Does this mean it is something you should do? No. We do not have to child-proof, or idiot-proof the server, to other players' detriment. We simply get rid of the idiots. Floorlength braids might be ridiculous and impossible to take seriously, but not all jobs constitute a safety hazard for long hair. Using an option that makes no sense in your position, because it's offered in other positions, simply defies logic. That's like saying "if you don't want security to take the guns out of the armory and shoot people, stop giving them an armory". This is basically your arbitrary decision. How exactly would NT "manifest care"? You are the one defending it rabidly, when we're all saying it'd be plainly ridiculous for someone to have unprotected hair this long in a machine lab. It doesn't seem too deep to me.

The fact that you repeatedly call our station (Aurora) "SS13" in your backstory, as well as makes me doubt that you have read Tajaran lore, or any articles pertaining to lore at all. As one of the staff members in charge of applications, I'm gonna have to ask you to come up with a better, reworked backstory before you can hope to be accepted.

I find this doesn't really address address the point of the hair being unrealistic when working around heavy machinery? The hair was one of several points brought up, so saying "votes are being withheld because of hair" constitutes a straw man argument. Additionally, I'm withholding my own vote because I've resolved to not vote on applications anymore (due to potential conflicts of interests), but I'll simply brought up any issues (or good points) I see and let other users debate them.

Seriously, Silver, replace the ERP thing by an actual reason u_u