From my experience in watching and playing, I have to agree that I think the best thing to do from this point forward is to save dedicated combat scenarios for EXTREME situations. While it may be fun in the moment, overall I do think it contributes to a problem where an exploration vessel is getting into far too much action when it comes to ship to ship and military combat. While my lore understanding is spotty surrounding the SFS/SFA/etc., I do think a notable majority of this arc has felt very combat-centric. There have been aspects that aren't surrounding combat, and those have been far more enjoyable to me. I loved RP'ing walking around on Orchard Moon to look at everything. The VR part was neat in terms of letting everyone have a proper chance to understand the scenario, but following that I felt that it was far too common that the Horizon was involved in ship to ship combat. In terms of my perspective (machinist) during these events, every time the ship got back into combat, it felt like I followed the same steps the week before. I understand that Machinist itself has some specific issues involving its general gameplay loop, so I'll leave those to the side. The more important point is that I was already beginning to feel burnout via repetition. It's fun in the moment, but I don't think I could do anymore of it; The departments feel more involved in reactionary recovery than proactive participation.
Most of my thoughts and reflections are framed in response to the finale of this arc, which felt to be a victim of severe miscommunication and mishandling. I understand that through newspapers and written articles, there was a factor of foreshadowing involved, but it definitely feels relegated to the backseat. Like in real life, most people only skim through Aurora's articles unless it directly involves them/pertains to a direct topic of interest for them. To many, this had felt like a call that was far out of left field and one that was frankly almost cartoonish in nature. Yes, I understand that a situation had grown dire to the point that the Horizon had to be called in, but I dont think the manner in which demonstrating the severity of the situation was executed properly. For my own personal case, it very much felt like after handling an incursion with a ship, we were suddenly being called to war and returning to Valley Hale just after leaving.
I understand the appeal to boarding and combat, I genuinely do. But I don't want it to be a normal thing. I don't want veterans of the server to have notches on their belt from kill counts despite being the setting's equivalent of an average worker, and I don't want to have the OOC possibilities of normalizing more power-gaming in combat situations. There were more volunteers than armaments in the Crew Armory for a boarding process that felt heavily foreshadowed. I don't want to comment about the power level of the event antags versus the boarding crew of the horizon, because frankly it didn't interest me. Plus, I don't have much of a say about it at all given my perspective of the events. What I do wish is that moving forward, however, is that these maneuvers are a lot more rare or a lot more policed so that all the off-duty don't become a second militia.
In terms of improvement for further events, I feel that a lot of my sentiments have either been phrased better by others or expressed already. But to recap, I do wish that all departments feel more relevant throughout an arc rather than consistently having to play damage control. Obviously suggesting ideas to organizers and coders is always a case of being an outsider looking in-- So I'm not gonna try to put too much weight into saying 'what if an event had us go to X or made us handle Y.' But I do want to say that on a conceptual level, organization and joint-department tasks could bring far more longevity and flavor into episodic events. Those are the aspects I enjoy the most about these events; Departments finally being given a reason to interact more with one another, rather than any of the standard procedures.
For me, personally, I enjoyed the aspects about these events that made my main job more busy and dynamic than the typical rounds. I think a lot of people enjoyed it in the moment, and I was happy watching a lot of people react and get hyped over the impact of ship to ship weaponry. However, I do hope this doesn't set a precedent for how most events will happen in the future, and I hope to see more variety that lets the crew of the horizon be more involved than reflexive.
