Sneakyranger

BYOND key: Sneakyranger Discord Username: Sneakyranger#8234 Character names: Arvo Mikkola (briefly) Lev Rotnitsky Rajinder Singh Remy Bellegard How long have you been playing on Aurora?: About three months of continuous play, since the NBT's release. I originally joined the server in September(?) or so of last year as Arvo Mikkola, and played for a few weeks to acquaint myself with the server and then lost interest in playing,, as I prefer ship settings and knew one was right around the corner. Notably, I did spend some of the intervening time reading the lore pages on the wiki. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? No. I've never been banned in general, actually. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: The OOC purpose of a head of staff is multifaceted: Firstly, to ensure that the parts of their department required for ship operation and the experience of other players is working to at least an acceptable degree (e.g have power set up as a C.E, ensure security is following procedure as HoS). Secondly, to teach the mechanics of the department to its members as necessary. Thirdly, to act as a mediator for in-character events that would realistically require some sort of authority figure. Finally, and as more of a personal requirement than one I would apply to all other whitelist players, a head of staff should do their best to engage their department in something interesting (be it a purely RP scenario or a departmental project/training) during slow or uninteresting rounds, if possible. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: Foremost, a head of staff character should not be overbearing or obstructionist in a concrete way. With a whitelist comes even more privilege than an unwhitelisted head role, and that should be kept in mind when evaluating how to run a department. In simple terms, don't fuck with people in a way that makes their round worse unless absolutely necessary. It's okay to be a boss that people want to complain about, as long as people are having fun complaining about you and not complaining about you because your interference made their round worse. As a more minor point, I also consider it mandatory for heads of staff to be intimately familiar with their departments, especially given that they are the first stop for teaching new players. With those two things in mind, I won't have an issue following these two points; I have played authority roles before many times elsewhere and am also very familiar with my desired head position. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau Ceti and how it affected your character and their career? I'm going to assume this question is asking about my intended headstaff character, and will split it in to two parts. Firstly, what's happening in Tau Ceti: High prices and low fuel. The phoron scarcity is affecting all points of the galactic economy due to its widespread use, and even rich Tau Ceti is no exception. With manufacturing and transportation costs on the rise, the SCCV Horizon has been commissioned by the Chainlink to secure new sources of phoron and materials for the megacorporations. For my character: Duong Huu Thuan is a Hephaestus heavy hitter. Born and raised in New Hai Phong's Tong Gwai Pei near the Zau Gwai Jyu area, he's been with the company since he was 17 and has worked for them for almost 30 years. Coming up from the bottom of the Hephaestus' planetary shipyards to make his way from a poor worker to foreman to chief engineer and consultant, Duong is an expert at dealing with both the needs of Hephaestus' management and the intricacies of New Hai Phong's endemic corruption. This combination of skills, traits, and background has made him a favorite of upper management on New Hai Phong, and earned him a place as a workhorse of the shipyards – if an area has a problem, call Duong to get it sorted. With that in mind – and with the fact that too much success can be just as problematic for an employee as too little – it was no surprise that he was offered a prestigious position as chief engineer on the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate's flagship as it carries out its vital mission to seek out new Phoron deposits. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Chief Engineer is the only head role I really want to play for the forseeable future. It is possible at some point that I would create an XO or a Research Director after suitably familiarizing myself with their respective departments, but that is some ways off. Security and medical hold little interest for me. Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yes, intimately so. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking.: Duong Huu Thuan, Chief Engineer. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Yeah. Have you linked your byond account to the forums? Yeah. Extra notes: I'd like to point out that I have developed a persona beyond the job and background for Duong – I simply did not feel it necessary or within the bounds of the question to mention it, and also did not want to basically lay out all the current intricacies of a character through an OOC medium. I felt that would be spoiling the fun a little bit. To paint a general picture, though, imagine the salaryman archetype filtered through New Hai Phong's distinct political/corporate environment and mixed in with seediness expected of someone from Con Seoi and Ton Gwai Pei. I can post more details if required by the application process.

My personal opinion: The A.M engine is barely ever used because it's not well documented and there's limited space, but it's cool to have the option. I do not believe that the antimatter engine is functionally any different from a supermatter engine or tesla, neither of which to my knowledge are on the chopping block. On these grounds, I don't personally think it's worth removing. From what I can ascertain through gameplay and wiki browsing, the supermatter simply uses an agitation source (like a simple high-power laser) and common gas (hydrogen) to generate almost limitless energy. The better the cooling system, the higher the energy output. The tesla ball is in a similar position: it as of right now doesn't even seem to use any "rare" parts, at least on the surface. It is a metal ball on a stick. I imagine the metal is special, but it's never specified as far as I know. A single tesla ball can produce 20+ megawatts and doesn't take up much space in game. It is also even less dangerous than a supermatter. Given the nature of these two other reactors, I don't feel that the antimatter is incongruous with currently existing material or energy crisis themes. I believe that if they wanted to do so the lore team could come up with any number of reasons why each of these three would not be practical in reducing phoron dependency - but ultimately, I believe it's simply because the three engines are still part abstraction, and so it isn't really necessary.

Ckey/BYOND Username: SneakyRanger Position Being Applied For: (Wiki Maintainer, Lore Developer, Deputy Lore developer): Wiki Maintainer Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page? Yes, though it seems far more relevant for a lore position than a wiki maintenance one outside of a few areas. Past Experiences/Knowledge: I very briefly maintained the wiki for CMSS13 several years ago in a position of grammar corrections and flow improvements. Examples of Past Work: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Sneakyranger Additional Comments: I was hesitant about making a wiki maintainer application for a variety of reasons, and I'd prefer to list the most pressing one here to be completely clear on what I'm offering: I have no idea how long my activity will keep up and make no promises in that regard. While I am the kind of person more inclined to a steady workflow rather than bouts of hyperactivity with long slumps, I cannot guarantee that I will be on board for the long haul - though I must add that it isn't impossible, either. The reason I did end up going ahead and submitting an application is equally relevant, in my opinion. Firstly, a discussion with Chada about how guaranteed activity isn't really necessary for the position if one is willing to resign assuaged my primary concern. Secondly, it occurred to me that as I do desire to continue making wiki edits for the moment, it would be far more convenient for everyone involved if I simply had maintainer access rather than spreading the work across both myself as the editor and someone else as the reviewer; this is especially the case given that most of my edits so far have been highly numerous small ones.

Saw Bisenti in a round today. Robot traitors had an interesting gimmick where the crew had to provide entertainment for each other and the most entertaining ones were ranked highest. Bisenti played in to it and managed to, I think improv or from memory tell a long joke that both served to further the gimmick and allow for the AIs laws to be reset at the end of the round, ending it peacefully. Very cool. I'll edit this post later if I can if I see more stuff and he advertises again to remind me, as I will say my experience with Bisenti has been limited (my experience with Arbs, though, hasn't).

I've played with Jay pretty frequently during my limited time on Aurora, and for as much as it's worth I feel that if I were in the position of whitelist maintainer that I would be comfortable approving their position as an AI. Their different characters are varied enough rather than all being similar and their synthetics act suitably synthetic while not being boring.