Fyni

Sorry about the delay. The team chatted this over, and this is approved.

The team had a chat about this, and we're going to give you a trial as a chance to impress. On trial until 20 SEP. Be sure to post this app once per round for feedback.

Sorry for the delay. This is accepted.

As this is implemented, archiving.

Since that works, locking and moving this.

We have no record of that ID been banned, however Discord does ban for IP too. I will lift the ban on your phished account (one assumes it will not reappear, as most phished accounts just become bot controlled) which hopefully should allow you to rejoin.

Hey! We have no record of a Discord account named Nyxicalm connecting to or been banned from our main discord. If possible, do you know your Discord user ID number? This is a 18 long string of numbers and unique to your account. It may help us track down this ban. I assume you have attempted to connect to no success?

Date: 23/08/2468 Supply Status: n/a Operational Funding Balance: 1,375,000电 Horizon Location: Al-Maqdisi Current Destination: S'rand'marr Crew, Your efforts over the past four months have shown some of the best from the SCC while thrust into situations beyond our expectations. While the mission goal of Operation Deep Dive remains unfulfilled, all reports indicate you have prevented a wide-reaching terror attack and seen the dissolution of a spur wide criminal conspiracy. The repercussion of your actions will be felt for some time still. While your original mission remains incomplete, the Board of Directors has dictated the SCCV Horizon withdraw from Coalition territory. Know that the mission will be continued as best we can. The SCCV Horizon is to proceed to the S’rand’marr system, via the coreward border of Orion’s Scar, where you are to aid in the completion of the bluespace gate in that system. Further details will be available in time. - Yin'altorz Qreblikis, Section Director (SCC)

On trial until 29 AUG, be sure to post this app once per round to gather feedback!

I very much admit I've contributed very little in terms of long form writing - and this is indeed a weakness. However, on the same token I believe been the outsider candidate here has it's own strengths. I have a very keen awareness of how the lore impacts the players it is been made for. I know what is needed from that perceptive, what is excessive. Why? Because I have been a long time lore consumer, and I have seen some thing flounder and other succeed. However, you can ask the lore writers I've talked to, who have approached me with things from basic ideas to near complete lore docs - how I have reviewed and made recommendations - which I hope shows a solid foundation which can be improved upon. Beyond the company which owns the ship itself which will require a lot of special considerations, I'd categorise them into two groups: the hands off and hands on. While all the freelancer ships will have their own command, some companies would demand certain standards of their ships, leading to them been more homogenised as the player ship encounters them. This will provide a short hand for ghost roles, antags and lore writers to add these ships in where required to make an impact. On the other side, more varied companies, with a strong thematic core will provide creative freedom while fitting into already established lore. As for exactly what these companies would look like is something I have only put surface level thought into at this moment. However, I fully believe the companies need to have strong archetypes, much like our current megacorp roster, so they can be understood simply and easily, with more depth under that surface. Ironically, I find a lot of big lore movements which happen in arcs have very little impact in the game itself. People will mention it and it may crop up as an antag gimmick or two, but then it's forgotten. The reason why small lore I believe can be more impactful is because it can be delivered in a more direct and impactful way. We need to focus on what is happening in the game server and deliver to that as much as we do longer term goals. Why? Because people will get more involved and interested naturally if current lore news is extremely relevant to their current in game situation - even if the scale of said news is smaller. And this becomes more important in Anabasis because I foresee players will be making decisions based on this more impactful small lore then something on a much grander scale, very far away. For example, imagine our Anabasis ship is off near whatever Himeo becomes in NBT2. Lore of whatever massive poltiical shakedown which may be going on on Qerrbelek isn't going to really matter in the round to round, whereas "Skrell ships attempting to force trade with group near Himeo" will have a much larger impact. We need to focus on what is going to be important, geographically and thematically, even if just through the delivery of smaller snippets and this is something a loremaster could direct. I've had time to consider my answer, and I'd say my vision of aurora is on a "slightly hard of centre" if sci-fi hardness were to be a spectrum (it is.). We clearly disregard a lot of universal laws in favour of our narrative (faster then light working like it does, time in general) but in other places we are a bit tighter. For me, the key importance of keeping it "slightly hard" is been consistent and believable in how we approach things. We need to avoid completely disregarding our own established rules and numbers in favour of narrative - something we already do for the most part - but this still leaves room for adding new things. I think my app and questions have made clear my main goal if I was LM would be to further integrate the lore and the gameplay beyond what we have right now, and sometimes we need to make new things to enable this gameplay. With the given example, I believe fantasy like minerals could be integrated, but must fit within rules. Link them in ways to phoron or bluespace, the "big two" breaks we have from "realistic sci-fi" and it's the duty of the lore team to, when able, to find a compromise which allows these elements to fit. I think a push for a true hard sci-fi disregards completely what we already have in game, something which I think happens a lot. We just need to find the right balance.

The psirens will, once mappers/coders get to it, begin to appear on exoplanets and away sites more frequently. Their introduction was in part meant to diversify our enemy simple mob roster for away sites and Ody - and I am looking to expand on this more in the future too.

I'd like to add here that he Dreams arc was built on a lot of lore written by @naut in her capacity as DLM, and we discussed ideas and lore direction constantly. While I personally ran the events, the arc could not have been what it is (was) without her help.

One or two per lore team would be ideal - making for roughly ten, though more can always be established. I distinguish actors from background for one key reason: background is stuff we hardly see in game in a big way beyond antag gimmicks (see: solarian marines) whereas actors will be designed to directly effect the ship and the gameplay, bringing the lore directly into more then just ones backstory. These actors need to be at the front constantly, as targets of contracts, rivals or even giving said contracts. They need an established identity and personality, ideas of strength and consequences which helps players make more well informed decisions. These can be backed up my in game items - uniforms, gear, guns - which will encourage none canon usage too. See how arcs inspire antags. I personally shy away from bluespace. It's exsistance is pretty much required to enable a lot of gameplay things, but we should seek to use it as little as possible. I believe there is a lot of interesting things that can be done within the boundaries of "hard" sci fi, and that in this case limitation is merely the vehicle for further creativity. My major concern is a combination of how overbloated some pages are, our hatred of making more pages, and the complete failure of some summaries to really summarise. It leaves new players looking at the page for, say, Xanu which is longer then wikipedia's page for most countries and is jampacked with expandable boxes which makes one glaze over. Until my rework of the nations boxes, you couldn't find the name of the planet's leader in a decent amount of time. You still can't find that it's people are often a french or indian origin. Instead, the summary is vague and unhelpful. This is not a knock on whomever wrote it - as a real wiki page, it reads great - but as a helpful entry point to a new player, not so much. And I will say this outright: I don't think any lore what so ever should be cut (at least for the wiki's sake.) It just needs to be reformatted and presented better. I see no issue with having *many* pages. We should not be afraid of short pages - it merely makes the wiki more searchable. Some pages should be naturally longer, but when something would make sense for it's own page, it should be on it's own page (to use the Xanu example - the Xanu corporations and the Xanu military details). Some pages read like a google doc, not a wiki page where we can easily link at any time to another page. I didn't want my application to become a cry for wiki changes, but I believe we have a major hurdle to new players and our lore in it - and this wiki reform will be something I will still champion should this be unsuccessful.