Girdio

Been away for about a year, but had been thinking about Aurora and spied this. On the whole this looks like a really interesting change of pace. The server has for the last decade, and despite lore changes, overall been "megacorp focused". As mentioned elsewhere, I don't think the current setting lines up with the attitude or beliefs I've seen IC regarding the corporations. There has been a significant detachment of "this is a pretty bad setting to live in" from the lore, to how characters interact with the setting. Making the lore and gameplay interwoven hopefully will fix that significantly. The twenty-or-so year time skip seems pretty short for something of this impact, but I understand the necessity to avoid a complete reboot of the setting, and to let people keep their characters if wanted. Personally, I believe that the lack of new players is a difficult-to-fix situation. It's been going on for years. I feel like it was a discussion even back in 2014-2015, with F_Sphere and everyone. The primary (or only) people know about the server is through word of mouth, for example. As much as I love the idea of an Aurora YouTube channel or Tiktok, I also know that's pretty unrealistic, as is paying for ad space without donations (and avoiding attracting TOO many people). That said, I'm hopeful that this will fix a significant portion of the issues of cliques/chair-RP that has established itself again. I can see a more engaging game mode being a good way to have established characters naturally interact with new players. It would incentive for established players to talk to new players as well. My biggest concern is that with everything being persistent, new players won't be getting the same experience as players here for the initial change. While obviously the setting being largely "the same" gets stale, it does prevent players feeling like they've missed crucial points. Like yes, the events are always fun and rewarding but you can survive not seeing them. From what's described here, it seems like everyone is working towards a goal of improving their lot in life. Making the ship look better, their overall situation better or whatever. How long does it take for that to go from the "we're struggling together" aesthetic to "we are comfortable and can relax". I feel like if there's no meaningful change to life on the ship, we're right back here talking about how everything is stale and nothing canon. But then, a new player joins and they've missed out on all this. Sure, they have the goal of "you see what we've done, we can do even more!" and that's fun itself. How long would it be until new players were coming into a setting they couldn't influence anymore though? My overarching question is that, I think. Are there plans to address both letting the ship improve and change with time, but also preventing a situation where new players don't feel like they've missed out for not joining at an arbitrary date? Outside of "oopsie an asteroid crashed into the ship and now everything you worked for is moot, rebuild it, hehe"? Also, I didn't see anything in regards to a timeline. I wasn't active when the server went from the Aurora Station to Horizon, so I don't know if a timeline was presented there. I see mentions of this being a several-years-in-the-making situation. Is there a current rough estimate of when everything would begin shifting over?

Thanks to Gabby and Hansolo (I realize I've never had to actually address your username, so hopefully that actually works lmao) for feedback. Thanks to CatsinHD for feedback, and for helping expand the concept of Tajara tail's sporadic 'flicking'. Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): Small Species: Tajara Short Description: This will expand the body language and non-verbal communication exhibited by Tajara, which all affect their social realm. How will this be reflected on-station?: It will give characters more 'uniform' Tajara actions, that more people will be able to interact with and engage with. To phrase it differently, it will allow players to have quick and easy references as to ways to flavor actions their Tajara is doing, or ways they could respond to actions from others. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: I believe so. Currently, (and as far as I know. If I'm wrong, it's going to be really awkward), the only discussion on the wiki of how Tajara may non-verbally express their emotions, affection/trust with each other or anything else is relegated to: "Because of their anatomy, Tajara are capable of using their appendages to express their emotions. Folding one’s ear back usually expresses fear or worry. Ears perked forward to demonstrate interest or attention. Ears also flick involuntarily when exposed to unexpected or loud sounds. Swaying one’s tail continuously is considered a childish way to express satisfaction. Curving down and blistering is a sign of hostility. Bumping muzzles and holding someone’s wrist are common displays of affection." I believe that fleshing this area out lets it fill in a gap not currently achieved by what's on the wiki. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Yes. Long Description: I couldn't think of any better way to include everything, so I put it in quotes. Obviously, tried to keep it relatively short. I attempted to avoid any possibility of unwanted consequences from occurring due to the area of "expressing affection", but I feel most players granted a whitelist are wise enough not to make their characters unrealistic/inappropriate when it comes to showing affection to other characters. I also attempted to write things in a way that would not retroactively damage existing characters (e.g, nothing is written to imply every Tajara must do this or adhere to any of it), or players that simply don't want to engage with this particular area.

Not in favor of this. We already have security checkpoints (three, iirc) and they get used a total of never. I can't see this suddenly making them occupied, and it's at the cost of negatively impacting Service/janitors. You could argue that it's because they're in areas only sometimes used, but the fact is that they do exist already, I don't really want to add more to a role/department that has a lot, while taking away from a role that doesn't. There's already not a lot of people who play janitors on the server, why take something they could use away from them? Furthermore, I don't really know if it adds anything to security, that they don't already have. Security already hangs out around the medical hallway, and in the service hallway, so they've had the opportunity for (basically) desk RP in that area for a while. If you REALLY wanted security to have a checkpoint in this spot, I feel like switching the janitorial closet, and the security checkpoint near operations would have to be the move. I could see an argument of "it makes more sense for the bug zappers to in a more central spot".

Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but remove this water cool/table combo in the interrogation room. I get flavor-wise why it's here ("do you want some water?", and it gets swabbed for DNA later) but realistically it's rarely used and kinda just clogs up the room. Firstly, since the 'default' sitting arrangement most people take is the suspect closet to the wall, and the interrogator near the door, any third-person in the room has to awkwardly stand in the corner, near the door as well - like this. I feel like, realistically if someone else wanted to sit in for an interrogation (and not in the hall or in the interrogation booth), it would make more sense for them to be positioned behind the 'suspect', like this, or where the table's at. Obviously, you could argue 'well, if someone else wants to sit in, just flip the seating arrangement and your problem is solved'. Luckily, there's also the additional changes you get by cutting it out mainly? The room will be even and look neater lol.

A missing cheese case, you say? Say no more, I know my first suspect.

A real monkey business meeting. Go on apes, escape.

Are spirometers already in the medbay to an extent? No idea what all medical actually has.

Hey! Noticed nobody had said anything for two days, so I decided to stop by. Have only a passing knowledge of your characters, so I can't weigh in there. I guess the easiest questions are always the repeated ones. I know you mentioned what seems like mixed views on the monarchy itself by Masha. Is she someone who would find herself more in line with the Commoners' party? Also going off that, how do you imagine her beliefs of the DPRA or PRA may be? It's intriguing, and it'd be interesting to hear more, she has views of the PRA having been relatively good to her, but simultaneously is following in the teachings of her parents. While not a necessity, religion is also a pretty big chunk of life for a lot of Tajara, but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere - does she have any particular leanings to/feelings towards the Parivara or the Ma'ta'ke pantheon?

This is probably my biggest concern here as well, and I feel like more details would be helpful in this regard. From the way it reads, without a Storyteller role you're simply going into the Mission with a similar outline as the other times it cycled to this particular mission. I can see this being exciting for the first few dozen times it gets run, but in time it'll lead to the same issue that Adhomai/Konyang had regarding planet-side ghost-roles. After a while, people get tired of the same exact thing, and it feels as if there would be a good chunk of limitations to the average "Actor" player in regards to telling a story, since a heavy emphasis is being placed on the story-teller to create 'mini-events' almost. That said: I do think this will be a good solution for juggling the people who want high-intensity/combat in a round, and those who would prefer not to at the moment or in general without having to play extended. As it stands currently, playing off-duty doesn't make you exempt to getting kidnapped and killed by the mercs, or accidentally getting set on fire by the techno. Surprisingly, people usually don't enjoy this happening. Dividing the ship into two sections feels like it would create an environment where both subsets of players are being seen to. In an ideal world obviously, you wouldn't have people complaining about there being too little or too much action because they chose to stay on the ship or go down. Of course, that's implying this implementation works perfectly. I think my only other comment is similar to the questions about how secret will be changed, but more specifically: what is the rollout in this going to look like? I don't see it mentioned in the Doc anywhere. Will this be something that gets drip-fed to the playerbase with like, a Mission round every weekend to get them used to idea, is it going to be a flooding-like situation where the server is rapidly shifted over to the concept? Perhaps that's outside of the current scope of the basic suggestion, but I'd still like to know how this would be implemented for the average player if it did go through. Is there a current timeline of when these changes would be made to begin with, if they went through? I know the statement is that it's been 'in the works' for six months, as a brainstorm but is there any idea on how long this concept would take to implement? I'm assuming it would be a massive ordeal, so is this something that would be a year? A couple years? As it stands, the concept is unique and a refreshing take that would keep Aurora uniquely different from other servers, while being a positive step forward for RP in general. I just feel like I'd appreciate more details for the finer stuff at some point.

I think these parts really hone in on what I've thought about recently. Maybe I'm missing the mark here, but the fact that we have such intense, Spur defining actions on the one hand, and then fuck all happens with that after makes it kinda feel like "what's the point?" These things happen in the moment, they're cool in the moment - and then it feels like it never mattered.

Personally, there were parts of the ship that I think was better flipped. As I mentioned throughout the day, I feel like some places having stuff closer in the foreground/closer to the viewer made it look more natural. Like the Service wing for example.

I think my biggest piece of feedback, is concerning the events during this arc all falling on the same day of the week. I know it's not always practical for lore-devs to have events alternate between Saturdays or Sundays, but it would have been nice. I know a good chunk of players, myself included mentioned off-handily the fact that they simply weren't able to be involved in really any of the events because they had work on Saturdays, or other pre-existing matters that were set in stone on Saturdays, but not Sundays. Hosting it on Sundays means that some players can't partake still, sure. Players who would have been able to play Saturday but not Sunday are left out - but that's why I feel like the events being switched between Saturdays and Sundays would have helped involve as many players as possible (and, yes I am aware that the events had a sizeable amount of players on). I know one event was hosted on a Sunday, the repeated shore leave to let people explore P.V. from the previous week, but I'm not quite sure why this didn't set up a trend. While I was able to cancel my weekly plans once to attend one of the events, I can see it leaving a bad taste for the players who simply didn't have that luxury and therefore didn't get to be involved with the events during the arc. Furthermore, I agree with Shimmer that P.V. was a little bit TOO detailed. Outside of the two-shore leave events, and the very initial off-duty waves, P.V. felt barren. There were simply TOO MANY things for the crew to interact with, which obviously adds flavor but means a lot of times people are walking around going "there's nothing here, I'm bored!".

Soul wins in the truest fashion.

Would it be possible to just give Konyang their own unique channel, instead of having to remove Common from off-ship roles? I'm not sure if that would be easier or not, but given that off-ship roles already have unique radio channels for themselves, I would assume something similar could be done for Konyang.

As much as I would like to see rats return because it would be funny if they ate the chef's food, they have no reason to exist outside of ruining RP.

BYOND Key: Girdio Game ID: crT-dtL9 was when it was ahelped, but this is an ongoing problem. Player Byond Key/Character name: Rawmoodles/Samson Letterman Staff involved: ABigBear Reason for complaint: Repeated poor antag gameplay. Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation?: Yes, spoke to Bear about my concerns about Rawmoodles, and the possibility of them being spoken to by staff. I was encouraged to make a player-complaint instead regarding the situation. Approximate Date/Time: Ongoing problem, no concrete dates. ------ I've watched Samson's numerous traitor rounds and they routinely leave a lot to be desired. Primarily, their antag rounds boil down to doing something minor, should it be stealing something or shooting someone and then escaping into space. From there, the round turns into Samson running from security and commonly misunderstanding game mechanics, then dying. From my interactions with Samson, and my time spent watching Samson, he doesn't try to have any gimmicks or interactions with anyone in the crew. Instead, it feels like him prioritizing 'beating security/winning' over anything else, a feeling which isn't helped by the fact that he will commonly hop into lockers at the slightest hint of trouble. Every time he is an antag (which seems to be very often), he tries something very similar to his other rounds with nothing new or engaging being thrown in. In the round that I ahelped the situation, crT-dtL9, he had taken the traitor powers that allowed him to teleport, which could be fun, if it was used to create something interesting. Instead, he used it to teleport endlessly to evade security, creating a segment straight out of Looney-Toons where he would teleport from one locker to the next to hide in. This isn't engaging, and all it does is force security on a goose-chase for a character. This, as mentioned, is quite routine for his antag rounds. Again, there are no attempts to interact with the crew, and interactions with security are also a bit silly as a lot of his discussions with officers or investigators end up being very goofy. I've aware of Samson apparently being new, but it may be good for them to step back from antag roles currently - at least until they can get more familiarity with the server, and a better grasp on playing antag.

Ran around as an investigator during the round, so I wasn't directly on the frontlines fighting, but also wasn't really hunkered down hiding somewhere. I agree with most of what Fyni said, it was definitely fun but ended up being perhaps a little overly difficult (understandable, it was the first time it got ran). Had there not been two mechs chasing the spider down, there was absolutely no way it would have gotten killed. There definitely should be a little more "animalistic" nature imposed on it in the future for other players. As someone called on ICly, it was a little weird that the Queen would know to keep attacking the medbay. Obviously, it's a ship wide threat but it felt a little much at times. It makes me think of the geists that would occasionally pop up during the last Tajara arc. Very strong and devastating, but not strong enough to possibly wipe the entire crew. Definitely unique and interesting though! Looking forward to seeing how it ends up getting utilized in the future.

For all the jokes that Bear levels out on OOC and in the Discord, I feel that the ability to engage with the community in a manner that is both jovial and friendly, without taking things too personal is a necessary requirement for a moderator. +1

The system doesn't require twelve, or a vast number of members, as I believe (I could be wrong) that would be outnumbering most of the other teams of staff members. Furthermore, with the fact that they lack the ability to cause significant harm to the server, keeping track of a system like this would most likely not be a high-intensity duty. Occasional oversight to ensure nobody is threatening/misleading players would seem to be much easier to handle, than someone who has access to server commands that can alter a round, or can be used to metagame. As well, this system would undergo an application in the same way any other staff role would be conducted on Aurora, and in line with other implementations on different servers which also require applications. It would not be a situation in which existing staff are performing an outreach and personally requesting favorite players become Mentors. Including them as part of the Staff is still fine, if people believe that they're not 'real assistants' until they're included in the Staff list. Mentors would, akin to other staff roles, still need a period of playtime on the server to ensure they would have a commitment to the server - I don't believe requiring that would be showing favoritism. Aurora has a reputation of being easy to learn the mechanics for some maybe. That said, there are still consistent discussions with new and experienced players regarding engineering and medical mechanics being daunting to learn and tackle. Even in an environment in which it's easier than /tg/, they still can be frustrating and challenging to adjust to especially if you're just getting into a server for SS13. Players being requested to learn these systems during Extended rounds continues to the issues of them still having to switch between platforms to figure out the next steps. As well, even if Aurora may be seen as an easier environment to learn compared to high-intensity platforms, there isn't much reason to not give additional measures for aid as improvement can always be made. In regards to just utilizing Lore discords, that certainly helps but this also implies that a new player is active or available to utilize Discord. Someone joining for the first, or perhaps second round may not be ready to join a community's Discord servers, and therefore telling them 'go ask on the Discord' for example, doesn't alleviate what they're asking about in the moment and just means that they feel like the question is unanswered. Yes, having new players engage with the greater community is something that a Mentor in this setup should advocate for and suggest, but it doesn't currently resolve the issue by itself. This puts additional responsibilities on current staff that was not already agreed upon. While some members of the staff may be fine teaching new players during the middle of a round, others may not and placing more duties can increase to burn-out for some positions that can be more demanding.