Fluffy

BYOND key: Fluffyghost Character names: (EW-A is also CyAO, the AI) How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Approaching a full year Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? I got a complain on my character when I first joined the server, a forum warning that expired and an ingame one because I fell asleep that was purged soon afterwards 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 main OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is to ensure everyone in the department, and that interact with members of said department, gets treated fairly and according to the rules, in a believable way and if possible that they can get a fair share of fun out of it, that includes curbing down do-all know-all personnel, attempts to metagame, to mantain situation and characters believability while ensuring the department try to remain functional and perform its services, that the tasks are fairly distributed to all the people in the department and are therefore engaged with the game while retaining a healthy amount of leeway on personal choices. You can also be tasked to teach and show to new players (or otherwise interns) how to do things inside said department, including etiquette and mechanically, or assign someone as a mentor to them to distribute the tasks, depending on how well stocked your department is. OOC ultimately, I believe your first task is to mantain an healthy balance of the fun of all players and be the first line of defense against rules violation. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: Whitelisted (heads whitelist) players are expected to act responsibly with the power they hold, striking a balance between allowing anarchy to spread in the department and a 1984 absolute survelliance and order dystopia, you'll be referred to and are expected to uphold and help uphold the rules and regulations (and definitely not break them, at least the OOC ones, and the IC ones only with a good, RP believable and explainable reason), you are also responsible in try to help player retention (including via the means indicated above) and have your good share of knowledge, work with the staff and be the first line of defense against bad behaviors. They also help to shape the events and atmosphere through their decisions, which must be believable. Finally, granting all of what already said, you are responsible to get the things in your department done, usually indirectly: a department that do not function affect the whole round for everyone, it's your job to avoid it happening via IC or (hopefully rarely via) OOC means as appropriate for the situation. I strive to uphold them via a careful consideration and balance of the round needs and the other player's needs. Explain how the recent events in the Spur changed your character and how they came to be employed on the SCCV Horizon. The defeat of the SRF in San Colette, for my gaddie, is indicative of the Solarian Imperialism™ consolidating its position and acquiring moral justifications for their imperialist expansion mires, confirming The Commander Was Right™ and that The Narrated Solarian Invasion Is Totally Coming For Real This Time Soon©. CL-04401 is preoccupied of possible derivative IPC rampancy and untagged shells flooding the markets from runaway SRF IPCs, which represents a threat on multiple possible levels. My Warden Diona is terrified of the fallout of a possible upcoming large scale war involving the solarian government and the SRF, and the losses and injuries such would bring, and dislikes the cats even more after the ALA encounter it got narrated about. My Pharmacist is evaluating to start a "subsidiary" to produce drugs to sell as a self medication aid to new customers that are now in possible need of it, and the profitability of such venture. My gonna-hopefully-be HoS wonders if this could ignite a "war to end all wars", and maybe provide some opportunity to advance career. My FR IPC is worried that it would be required to be deployed in war zones, and possibly destroyed therefore, given the lightness of its chassis. My Surgeon, as a stoic, do not let itself be much affected, sticking instead to what it can do and living the moment. My gonna-hopefully-be CMO, former Psychiatrist, hopes to be up to par to help the traumatized victims that might seek employment here. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Head of Security, eventually overtime to expand in other departments or even captain one day, in the future. Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? I have read the wiki page for the HoS, the CMO and the Captain. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking: Fyodor Koesvyin - HoS Sigismund Frenzick - CMO (former psychiatrist) Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Indeed if I fuck up or ruin other people's fun, nuke me out of the whitelist, the server population's overall fun is more important than any whitelist. Have you linked your byond account to the forums? Yes. Extra notes: Re-applying from After having waited more than the suggested period, hopefully enough to consolidate my RP abilities to an acceptable level

I don't think this will go well, but as usual I am down to try it with a testmerge, so we can talk with some experience at hand

Keala is fun, can't wait to see what goolie would bring to the table with a bug (whose specie has questionable ethical standards) +1

To my understanding (lore guys correct me if I'm wrong), the mindshield prevents you from being manipulated, not only from psionic powers; the Janitor might not know anything of real value, but manipulating him to get some left around documents, take some pictures of important things, and so on is a perfect corporate espionage strategy, which is even more effective if you employ underpaid quasi-slave labor (another reason you want the people that operate something to be at least equally reliable to the importance that thing they operate is) The positronic brain, to my understanding, can be proben to know the directives/laws that are imprinted, plus can be wiped at owner's will (for owned IPCs, of course), I would imagine if the SCC were to go down that route, those IPCs would be wiped and re-programmed before boarding, and would also always stay onboard the ship The ship can easily be vented, given the openness of it, there's sparsely any "security" door (or how those things that shuts the side of the Armory are called, shutters maybe?), we have external walls that are just standard windows you can pierce through with some swings of an axe, electrical and air ducts are unprotected, maintenance tunnels have no CCTV cameras, the cameras are locked down anyways, there's little movement sensors, there's no IFF area sensors (like what the secHUD does, but checks if you are authorized to be in that area, and if not, it triggers something), the AI is not tasked to protect the ship and help enforce the regulations, possible entry areas (docks) are unmonitored, we have a single layer of external hull, there's no CIWS-like system, most machines don't require any authentication to be operated, (to my knowledge) nothing uses biometric authentication (as long as you steal the correct ID, you can access everything, all you need is to steal a pilot badge and walk into the CIC to fly the ship into a sun/planet), etc. To my understanding, and according to the wiki page of the Horizon, the BSD is a backup plan in case we run out of fuel, not regularly used: "The Horizon is a first-generation hybrid, meaning it is constructed with both a Warp and Bluespace Drive. Implemented by the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate as a fallback method in the event that the ship is unable to acquire phoron for refueling, the aforementioned reactors of the Horizon will be capable of outputting enough power to fuel its warp counterparts." For the speed of the BSD, I am not aware of it being any faster than other ships, can you give me a link where it says so? If I understand it right, according to the wiki page on bluespace drives, the larger your ship is the more powerful (and I guess thus, faster?) your BSD is: "[...] Limited by the size of any given vessel, Bluespace Drives vary in their abilities depending on their design - with only incredibly powerful ones reserved for flagships of the respective nations within the Orion Spur." We shoot lethal polymer rounds from our ballistic weapons, I think that's because they, unlike armor piercing ones, do not breach walls We know that, canonically, ships like the Guhammer (or what was the name of that ship that went to fight the SRF) can resist being shot at by a cruiser cannon barrage without even having the shields going down, and we know on the Horizon the shields (when they're up) negates any meteor we get out way, I think it would be safe to assume this wouldn't be a problem Of course, but this presumes that the ship cannot defend itself, which in my idea of how the Leviathan would fit better isn't the case, it would still be a weapon able to pierce through shields and deliver devastation, just not a "we have decided we had enough, fuck you" one, neither a secret super weapon project; just a strong energy-based weapon, like the laser rifles you talked about, but for ships, we can even make it do something cool like traversing any window/shield to "detonate" inside the enemy ship, in that sense I do agree with you here (minus the only laser weapons, I love the good old bullet based rifles), and I am a strong proponent of the idea of rounds with powerful antagonists or pure RP rounds alternating in some ratio that balance the relaxing chairRP rounds (which I enjoy in proportion) with the chaotic, bloodbath "everything is going to shit" ones (which I also enjoy in proportion)

I feel like you missed the point that I was trying to convey, which can perhaps be summarized as: If the vessel is so critical and important, there would be no spared expenses, less than the best people that the universe has to offer would not be employed on this ship (the SCC would still employ them, as you answered, but not on a vessel of such importance), etc. Your answers are mostly correct in a general sense, but I think they miss the point: If the ship was so critical for the SCC to justify the installation of an experimental gigaturboweapon, other expenses would not be spared far before it, they would not cheap out on such a critical asset if it were critical enough to justify said installation (and risks that comes with having it outside a controlled environment), and even more so after having installed such a secret project on the ship

I enjoy interacting with dessy's characters, and I'm interested to see what Kasa'an will bring to the table +1

You would be generally right, the issue I see is that it would put into question other things: Why would the SCC employ people of questionable loyalty in its most precious vessel, like Guwans, ex criminals, dregs and Himeans that have an anti-corporate sentiment, DPRA Tajara, ex EE, etc.? Why wouldn't everyone who's left be mindshield implanted, to ensure they cannot be manipulated? Why wouldn't the SCC train everyone to use small arms to defend such an important vessel? Why not employ mostly IPCs, that by their very nature cannot go against their directives? Why would it leave its most precious vessel with obvious security design flaws? And why would they send it alone in dangerous territories without one or more escort vessels? Why wouldn't they have security personnel armed 24/7 patrolling the decks of such a critical ship, with the order on the line of "if you see anyone suspicious, it's surrender or die"? Why wouldn't the rest of the crew be armed with a sidearm too, to defend this critical asset? Why would it be equipped with subpar weapons in the armories, instead of automatic rifles and LMGs? Why does it not have automatic turrets installed at every docking arm, so that unauthorized people cannot dock and sneak in quietly? Why would the dock controllers allow anyone to open it, without authentication? Why is is a peasy cruiser, instead of a dreadnough class? etc. etc. If we look at it from this perspective, a lot of other things would start to look out of place, perhaps even the ship being a civilian (instead of a paramilitary) one itself as a concept, if we are to employ the idea that this ship is that much important With the perspective that the mission is important, but the ship itself isn't really that much important to the SCC, a lot of things makes sense again, and the presence of the leviathan with the current lore about it looks kind of out of place Having it be a less powerful, not secret uberweapon, on the other hand, would make more sense (at least to me) and also see it more used, which as a consequence gives engineers more work they can do. To address the uniqueness of said weapons, aka "why don't other ships have it?": Because it sucks a lot of power, we have a supermatter crystal that's (afaik) made of pure, solidified phoron, that no other ship has, we can afford the power to shoot it, other ships cannot afford that; we are designed for long-term missions away from friendly ports, so having a weapon that requires no ammunition makes sense, other ships are designed to work inside a supply chain or in friendly space, where they can just reload whatever ammos they shot, so they do not have a need to have such a weapon + expensive power generation engine installed, and so on

Does it, though? Residential has escape pods you can eject from, and for the people playing the round, they know the risk: If you play a canon round, you can die, you can avoid losing the characters you're attached to by playing others that you are not, even purpose-made ones For how I see it, the reason we play canon event is to drive a story, not have it narrated to us, we are up to having characters die with the idea that they might help further the narrative and turn it one way or another, the prize is shaping the future of the narration, the stake is months of character building for a meaningless death As long as players are properly informed about what the risk they will face (eg. "event intensity: doomsday" on the calendar), why would it be a PR disaster? You know the risks, you know the rewards, can't complain about it afterwards I think around the forums, it was brought up in different threads that the story seems more like narrated to us, rather than shaped by us, and I think there's a good portion of players (pool time?) that would prefer to shape the future of the server lore, rather than have it narrated to them with little agency over it Of course, but one of the points I think is being brought up is that the uniqueness isn't much fitting, it would (to make a comparison) be like saying that an unique house has a nuclear reactor in the basement, would it be unique? Of course, but would it be fitting for an house? No The same thing goes for a super-uber experimental weapon that far upper-hands any other weapon, why isn't it installed on a TCFL cruiser? If it is that secret of a project (in its weight class), able to harness the power of energy itself, I would expect it to be under testing in some unknown area of the space, on a military ship, installed in a room with armed guards all around it, not on a mostly undefended civilian vessel that employs people of questionable loyalty to the corporation I also do think, like Matt, that the two things can and should coexist, I do enjoy comfy chairRP rounds, and I also do enjoy "everything is going to shit, all able hands grab a weapon or the closest thing to it" ones, I think we can have both and they enhance the fun of each other

It can also be said that they board instead of shooting us down precisely because we have the massive fuck-off weapon they would be shot with otherwise You do not know the capabilities of a weapon just by looking at it I believe this stems from the issue that we do not (yet) have overmap antagonists / ship to ship gamemode(s), which don't get me wrong is still an issue, but one that will get resolved as a side product of having said mode(s) Because as per SOP it should be heavily weighted against other options; to latch back to the previous point, shooting a secret weapon is a good way to let any observer know what it's capable of, which means every time you shoot it, you can be giving away secret information about its capabilities It's an experimental weapon, if the experiment is over, the weapon can be removed and "goes back in the lab", so to say [OK I seem to be unable to remove the pages, I just wanted a separator... Either way, continues on the next page] It is however still a civilian ship, the importance of the mission doesn't alter that, usually if the mission really is that important and the place you need to go to perform it is that dangerous, you send the military, either alone or in support of the civilian side, you don't give the civilian side the best weapons and send them out, for a variety of reasons; civilian ships are also designed differently, so it would be hard to equip them with good weapons and have them operated; that is IRL of course, in universe it can be whatever we want it to be, but that's a point to consider I personally still would prefer the later and it being a possibility, the horizon should be able to lose, it's an extension of the "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" philosophy, I do believe players should make the story of the Horizon and its occurrences, not have it narrated to I think most people would run away from seeing such a thing, be paralyzed by fear, if armed shoot in the general direction to make such a monster hopefully go away; Those that would be able to fight effectively after having seen such a thing (which would be very few) should indeed be able to, and the mechanical element of that should not allow doing that to harm the good of the round That it can do it at all, is the issue, I think Apart from these points, I more or less agree with both sides, perhaps tuning it down so that it's still stronger than the other weapons we have, but not a (near) instant win button, could be the solution?

I support this application, Broadsword knows his lane and seems to know it well, I do not recall any OOC problematic decision that he took in any round either, so +1 from me

I have pondered on this for a bit, and I do not think I can supply / find the optimal solution that covers everything, anything I can think of will make a portion of the players unhappy, including doing nothing What I can offer are possible approaches and challenges to the points that are brought, eg. the idea of the "super-doc", I have thought about it for a while but I have not reached a clear conclusion about what that would be, what makes a character a "super-doctor"? For how I conceptualize it, it's a doctor that does more than what the other doctors can do, but that would be a self-defeating terminology because, if it will be decided that those doctors can make medications, they would not be doing anything more than their peers, thus they would not be super-doctors, right? If it is conceptualized in the sense of impact to the round, aka mechanical role fulfillment, I am not sure it would be covered either: Are they more "powerful", in a round dynamic sense? I do not think so, their ability to cure people is the same as it would be if a Pharmacist or CMO made the medications 30 minutes before and cryoed, they are not able to "heal more" than what they would do normally. This also raises the question if the CMO is a super-doctor, because a CMO can make all the medications, physician work, and all the Surgeries. It also raises the question if Surgeons are super-doctors, because they can use all the medications and do all the surgeries. Perhaps I misunderstood the sense of the term and I am using the wrong frame of thinking about it, but I think it would be important to answer the question of what makes a doctor be considered a super-doctor (?) My initial proposal/idea was to split what each role can do, and it would have had some expected benefits like the ability to mantain a more or less even distribution of patients between the roles during mass causalities moments, and alleviate the issue at low pop, it however also has disadvantages such as distilling it more into a flowchart of separations between the roles more, as Limette validly pointed out. Another option that I thought was to make some medications expire after N amount of time, so that the Pharmacist would be needed to make them on-demand instead of stocking the fridge and being mostly with anything to do for the rest of the shift; Another option would be to give the Pharmacist an alt title as a first responder, given the time difference between when the two mechanical aspects are performed (making meds is generally covered by 00-40m, grabbing patients is generally covered from 40m to round end); Another option I thought of is to just add an automatic medicine maker that makes medications, on demand, overtime for the Physician, with the time taken proportionate to the complexity of the medication requested. There are many possible approaches that can be taken, but I have so far been unable to think of a solution that has only benefits and no downsides, we might just have to accept some lossess somewhere, whether it be variety, accessibility, time to learn, expectations and so on.

They are, but if we go by the wiki, that should be treated the same way as a Physician making medications, currently, because the wiki page on them states: For how I interpret it, the wiki says that they should not be able to provide any help beyond what a normal person in any other department could, unless there's someone else like a CMO or Physician or Surgeon that scans the patient and goes like "Administer 10 of this, 5 of that, 5 of that other too [...]" Of course, that absolutely sucks to play, being a Physician without a Pharmacist or CMO in a bloody round sucks, same as being a Pharmacist without the other roles, I do not think there's any value in "Let me/us watch you die / sorry I cannot do anything about your brain damage", neither from an RP nor from a mechanical perspective, and that also sucks to be on the receiving end of the "well I guess I will just have to go around with 30 brain activity slamming my head into the doors / well I guess I will just die / etc." for no other reason than "wiki says I cannot help you" too. Something that can solve the points of "I do not want to do/learn X" is to keep everything as is, and add an alt title for the Physician whose meaning is "Yes, I can make medications", do not want to do the meds? Keep the normal title, do not want to do the GTR/Physician work? Pick the Pharmacist, cool with / want to do both? Pick the Physician with the alt title that lets you make the meds. Also alleviate the lowpop issue. Couple it with a stipulation that if there's an actual Pharmacist you should let them handle all the medicine production, and it seems to me it would be an improvement over the current situation.

In the simplest form of the proposal, they would do what they already does, with the addition that they can make the medicines, and assuming they do those at roundstart (which is when they have no patient, or rarely one) I do not really see they stomping all over each other, they're just preparing for what will come later in the round, in the same fashion as preparing the ORs/GTR/Cryotubes. Wouldn't they have the same amount of tools at their disposal as an antagonist Pharmacist? IIRC the Pharmacist can access the OR and potentially steal all the tools they want, an antagonist CMO would have the same tools too, and if it makes antags more of a threat? Good, we like powerful antags! This would be pretty arbitrary, can you be a Physician that only use cryotubes, or a Surgeon that only do fracture repairs, or a Pharmacist that only makes the 3 main chems, because you don't want to do/learn the rest? I don't think having to learn how to make the 3 medications that you really need to have to keep people from not immediately dying is a meaningful difference, you don't need to know how to make every medication.

I think that a relevant command (CMO, Captain) can already order that, also, from an OOC perspective, losing John Sol retired Marine now part of the ISD isn't the end of the world, the gimmick just goes on, losing the only/main antag turns the round into glorified extended, and having it down and waiting usually means at best that the flow of the gimmick is halted until you get around to heal him up, and at worst that it escapes cuffs and gets shot down irrecoverably, so ultimately I am not in favor of this, though I could potentially be in favor of this in case the antag threat level is increased (something I'd like to be) or the introduction of a dynamic game mode that replaces the antags as they go down.

Does it, though? Because the summary of it is a simple "Don't treat surgically things you can make meds for", thus basically completely eliminating the chart (or at least, being very easy to remember): "Can I make a med for it? If no, I can do the surgery, if yes, I cannot do the surgery and must make the med" That's pretty much all there is to remember there, alongside a small chart (which is now smaller than the surgery one, containing only a couple of names) of what medications you can make. What kind of issues are you thinking of? Yes, the names I came up with are provisionally, they can be changed to whatever names are wanted without any issue.

Possible other approach: Pharmacist → Removed Physician → Two alt titles, I will call them with the two first names I can think of, they can of course be changed: "Internist Physician" and "Pathologist Physician" Internist Physician → As the name implies, it's an internist type of doctor (internist aka hospital, not related with interns ie trainer role), is specialized in medical work inside an hospital Pathologist Physician → A doctor specialized in treating pathologies Intern Physician can: Perform the following surgeries: Bone Repair, Arterial Bleeding repair, Tendon Repair, Foreign Body Removal, Lung Repair Make the following medications: Inaprovaline, Dylovene, Butazoline, Dermaline, Dexalin Plus, Mortaphentyl, Adrenaline, Alkysine, Adipemcina Pathologist Physician can: Perform the following surgeries: Bone Repair, Tendon Repair, Foreign Body Removal Make the following medications: All of them Surgeons can: Perform the following surgeries: All Make the following medications: Inaprovaline, Dylovene, Butazoline, Dermaline, Dexalin Plus, Mortaphentyl Stipulations: If at least one is available, medications production must be left to the Pathologist Physician If at least one is available, surgeries must be left to the Surgeon If at least one is available, patient acquisition should be left to the First Responder If at least one is available, the GTR should be left to Intern and/or Pathologist Physician(s) Both the Intern Physician and the Pathologist Physician can operate in the GTR, but with different methods: The Intern Physician treats basic things with medications and more complex things through surgery if there's no Surgeon, the Pathologist Physician treats most of everything via medications The Pathologist Physician is expected to fill the First Responder role if none is available, at which point when you'll be needed to do such 40+ minutes have passed and you probably already made all the medications you can think of and some more Do not want to do medications? Select Intern Physician, you can make the basics you need, can't make the more advanced medications (so no OOC upsetness), and can do surgeries to some level Really like that scalpel? Select Surgeon, you can make the bare minimum amount of medications you need for the patient to not immediately die in your hands, and get to treat everything else via the scalpel Expected benefits: Medbay can function and scale at high and low pop, one role filled (FRs apart) is able to treat most of everything, so that noone gets the short straw There's no superdoctors, if you can make the meds, you cannot fix the same type of issue surgically; If you can fix it surgically, you cannot make the meds for it You keep having things to do: If you are a Pathologist Physician, once your medication production cycle is over, you can still play in the GTR/ICU to treat the patients; if you are an Intern Physician, you keep having things to do via the GTR itself and surgeries; If there's no FR on shift, the Pathologist Physician gets to do the recovery of the patients while the Intern Physician gets to manage the GTR, if there's a Surgeon, the Surgeon gets to manage the OR Any two of the three roles can be missing, without making the one that is filled excessively suck You still get things to do, more or less spread consistently across the round, in any combination of roles, it doesn't suck as much to be alone, and you aren't left spinning your thumbs at full roster Thoughts?

I do not think it would even need retcons or anything like that, honestly... Just nuke the Pharmacist slot, say that the Physician can make medications, change the access of the door to let them in, and that's pretty much the minimum viable product

I've played with Ren a fair bit, and never seen any OOC problematic choice that I recall, so +1 from me!

As I do not remember any issue with insane orders or overstepping, I can support this application, +1

No, I believe we should instead have (and make more common to) deputize the crew and use the crew armory/ops/science to prepare to fight back threats that are sufficiently large to warrant that response, before waiting for all or most of command and/or sec to have been downed.

You're thinking of a sonar, radars do work in space and, as I said, if this is better from a game perspective, even better than what it was, realism can cede to fun, my point is that it was not a bug, but intentionally designed to do what was described. That is all.

This isn't expected, I will look into it when I can. This was not a bug, it was designed that way, because that's how radars work; If it is more enjoyable this other way, it's better, but it was not bugged, it was designed that way. It is, the sensors ping fairly frequently when there's no lag, they otherwise should update every some seconds or so.

I do not see any issue in adding more bounties, and it's more content, so I support this idea.

That's because third party ships are heavily discouraged to engage the Horizon, and the Horizon has no real reason to engage the third party ships either; I think that is more of a policy issue than a mechanical one. Sensor probes projectiles were introduced in #15817 and positioned on the map in #16219 - they have to still be tweaked, but provide an immediate 100% contacts scan of the area around the path they're shot at, which is how you can acquire an immediate view of what you have around; the next iteration I would like to make will be beacons that are shot and attach to the enemy vessels which makes them immediately scannable, once the probes are tuned and ship combats more common.

Sure, I will then make that specific nymph a racist instead, towards Tajara (and especially NKA ones), as a cognitive obstacle.