Sniblet

It’s been a bit, but last I looked the armor spec game is entirely one-sided. Uplinks only sell “heavy armor,” which is above average against everything, and uplink EVA gear has been deliberately altered so that it’s all identical in protection. Horizon can do the whole armor counterplay game, while antagonists can only choose their weapons and looks (but oh boy, can they ever). The justifications for this were pretty flimsy (‘Horizon has an armory, the mercs do not’ - except that they do?) and broke down to “so that Horizon can always win.” It’s kind of an ugly thing to have to say, but it’s fair I think. Armor spec makes an immense difference. You cannot kill someone in ballistic armor with a handgun. I mean that you cannot. When I say that you cannot, I mean that you can’t and it is impossible. They passively outheal the gun in the way of Kirito from Sword Art Online or The Thing from John Carpenter’s The Thing. Longarms are different, but it’s still impossible (by which I mean not possible) to blow off limbs through ballistic armor.

The ominous device. Upon creation, it allows the antagonist to choose a skin from one of many hair-raising geometries: * Pillar * Dome (smooth) * Dome (hexagonal panels) * Pyramid * Cube In any of the deeply disturbing colors available to the machinist’s paint gun. It can be deviously renamed and redescribed, including a bespoke OOC description line, at any time via an OOC interaction. The device can similarly be made to pulse frightfully with spine-tingling light of a chosen color and intensity. Antagonists can use it to deviantly create custom SCC announcements on a short cooldown. If it is destroyed, they are informed of its destruction through a chilling OOC warning. An antagonist can horrifically produce a remote controller from the ominous device, allowing themselves to use the renaming, redescription, and lights functions remotely. The renaming, redescription, and lights functions, available only to antagonists by default, can be unlocked by an antagonist so that others can use them. In like a scary way. There is an admin variant, where all antag checks are replaced with server permissions checks. The ominous device otherwise doesn’t do anything. It does nothing.

I’m happy to be of help as your virtual reminder buddy. If there was any other silliness you were meaning to retcon, remember to do that too. Beep boop. It’s kind of a shame, but I get it. Warp alone can still be a big looming threat if we want it to be.

Lore Impact: basically zero if you retcon this, worldshaking if you push it forward normally Species: whoever bothers. Humans, probably? Short description: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Einstein_Engines#Taipei_Engineering_Industrial Remove the lie that no one has volunteered to follow up on the hyperdrive in all this time. How will this be reflected on-station?: Depends on how you use it. It can have comparable implications to the invention of FTL, or change nothing. Is this addition redundant?: No Do you understand that lore teams can change it?: that’s the point yeah Long description: It has been FIVE, sorry, FIFTEEN YEARS and NO ONE has volunteered nor been volunteered to explore an entire new dimensional anomaly that, if mastered, would shatter the Chainlink - and could have shattered NanoTrasen before the Chainlink was formed with years to spare. Countless investor meetings have been had and Einstein Engines’ leadership has never reached a majority opinion that this technology should be pushed forward despite existing obstacles. They are not sending in IPCs or viax. They are not sending in dregs. When the first Space Race went down, states had more volunteers than they could find uses for. The Hyperspace Race is not happening due to a complete lack of volunteers, in this, a time with many times the number of living beings at hand to select from; in this, a time when any and every improvement on the warp drive could end NanoTrasen. If I’m this annoyed and I’m not even in the Auroraverse, how does Noelle feel right now? TEI quit at the first turn, and NanoTrasen Incorporated and Hephaestus Industries and the Nralakk Federation and the Serene Republic of Elyra and the Technocracy of Galatea and the C’thur Hive and Lii’dra and the Golden Deep are united in not wanting to be so rude as to steal their yellowed notes, instead being content to wait and let some patents dry up, apparently. “Conceptually instantaneous (whatever that means) galactic transit without the use of phoron fuel is not of interest to us at this time.” -Taipei Engineering Industrial Office of Corporate Communications I don’t know how you can safely advance this without making upsetting waves in the setting, but I think it’d be cool if some faction somewhere had this ace in something that believably resembles active development, as opposed to being forever delayed by the most unbelievable excuse yet contrived by man. Maybe push it forward - maybe tell me that there’s a reasonable obstacle holding TEI back (like okay maybe they do want to go forward but you know maybe it’s hard) - maybe say hyperspace was discovered only this year instead of fifteen years ago. Failing any of that, fine, retcon the dimension. As it exists now, this is wholly unbelievable and I treat it as if it’s not there.

Sorry, I'm a little late. We're still talking, right? Right. So after 30 minutes' focused work, the chef (when one comes up) can now make nearly anything on the menu as many times as anyone asks (0-1 times), and you can make infinite leather whips and glitched reishi joints to disturb and concern security with (when they ask you to stop, you will). Hydroponics is not fun. Growing bandages is useless, unless you can grow something better than an ATK. Hydroponicists need something to live for, and in order to count, it has to be something that people might go out of their way to ask you to do. You're the only source of coca on the ship, but cocaine is, um. And, oh, cool, you've made 400 quadrilliomn jars of honey, mmm I drinky it and it says you taste honey that's so fucking cool you're really cool man, anyway, I'm gonna go aggressively flirt with the HoS, because he'll say something a bit less predictable than you taste honey (it literally just says honey i am enraged by these kinds of taste descriptions). You know what I'd do? Make cooking more interesting. Add scent and make taste more evocative than you taste fucking honey and when I ask you, now, to let cooks be even more creative than a simple upgrade to the existing taste system would allow, what I mean is let them write taste descriptions themselves like those funny visual descriptions you sometimes see in make you go hmm, if they're willing to do a little work and get a sufficient variety of spices from botany. We have spices. We have condiments. They all just sit there on the counter because they all print you taste SPICE (oh sorry "SPICES") and MAYONNAISE (!!!). That's so fucking cool man. I'm gonna go very strongly imply to the HoS that I am a danger to myself and others and need to be heavily restrained and monitored in person by him and no one else. The bar's good, because I can make almost lyrical taste descriptions with a bit of study. People will drink them and go "oh, wow, how did you make this?" not because it was difficult or tedious, but because it was interesting to read and realize that such creativity is possible and no one else had thought to do that before. The kitchen gets honey. Wait, no. It gets meat and salt and something indescribable. Because there's no hydroponicist.

No affiliation with the lore team, just dropping an observation as a regular bug guy. It’s not impossible, but uncommon for a vaurca to be forced into a role that they resent, like Ra Riva. The Queens know what their castes are capable of and comfortable with, and unhappy workers are less than ideal - a bulwark made for chemical weapons would often, at the least, be grown with an exception to their nonviolent nature imprinted in their neurochemistry. Look at Vedhra’s page; are all of those workers secretly miserable? Unbound vaurcae, free-willed though they are, are purpose-built the same as viax; they’re grown specifically to fill the first position they’re put into. They often diverge later in small ways, but are born for what they’re expected to do. There would likely be a reason for this mismatch, as opposed to it just happening. Maybe it was a test; maybe the cell’s needs changed unexpectedly and a temporary concession fell on Riva’s big silly shoulders.

“If it makes you feel any better, what you came here to discuss doesn’t matter to you or anyone, you’re arguing for something that you’ve been explicitly interested in avoiding, and you never had any hope of pushing this through.” I’m salting a fair amount and I’ll stop from here, but please listen to yourself.

If they decide to wear the uniform. A machinist in black is indistinguishable from an engineer in black until you look at the ID. A pharmacist in a red qipao doesn’t look like anything. If you see a vaurca in vaurca clothes, you have to guess by the color they’ve chosen for their clothes (see: painted chassis - you don’t need to add new sprites, this functionality already exists, what are you talking about), their gear belt if applicable, and their satchel or tunnel cloak - or better yet, examine them. See also: any racial clothing and most loadout clothing. Golden Deep outfits. I recall the team being interested enough in them. Brother, you just examine them and then remember their face. We all do it. If you’re on Aurora’s forums, you already know what the woman in the red qipao does at a glance, or the cheery woman in the brown and red outfit, or the sniffing tajaran in unaltered laborer’s clothes, or the Athvur bulwark in plaid, or any and all captains, XOs, or RDs whom you’ve seen more than once. You know what Ren Hartfort really does, even though he dresses as a physician. Usually, you still have to check whether or not they’re on-duty. This is not creating a new problem, only adding new, interesting, wholly reasonable dimensions to an existing one. A minor one, necessary for an existing positive tradeoff at that - have you ever seen these mixups be anything but a slight, temporary embarrassment? not interested. Man, I just try to think through these things as if being right matters.

The roleplay anarchist is here. Everyone, please stand for another passionate argument for the dissolution of the rules. “Uniform standards are already permissive” Yes. Yes with the chad face. Unrelatedly, OP is saying they ought be more permissive. ”It would be a bad look for corporate” No. No with the chad face. What does this mean? Honestly, what are you talking about? Most fictional and real steel-exterior robots don’t wear clothes except as a joke. Do we feel bad about this? Does this fact reflect badly on Boston Dynamics or the Confederacy of Independent Systems? Would it if the robot had a job? If we in the real world started putting robots to work, would they have to follow the same workplace dress code as the people, or wouldn't you just like, apply paint and decals as necessary? If they start acting more like humans, does that really change anything? ”I’m not interested in rewriting the policy right now” OK. If you don’t feel like typing, let someone else do it. I volunteer. I’m sure you could find others, too.

I go up to the panel and point my multitool at it. I startle as though I am under attack and suddenly grip my multitool, white-knuckled, in both hands. Swaying in a desperate bid to regain balance, through clenched teeth, I hiss, “I’m— losing— CONTROL!!” And I fall to the ground with a cry of agony. The maintenance panel is impassive, embedded in the wall before my dying body. Its caution stripes and “do not tamper” warnings make for a grisly reminder of who really runs this vessel.

Though the lore exists to serve us and can change as we please, it’s currently written that all IPCs are humanoid in order to capitalize on the positronic brain’s adaptability (with it taken for granted that non-humanoid chassis are, somehow, necessarily not adaptable). That would need to be stricken from the wiki. I do want to see unbranded chassis options, but it sounds like it would be loads easier to just make alt sprites for the Baseline (though even they’re made of Hephaestus Integrated limbs, which is a bruh moment on a historic scale).

hemnlo We are Lii'dra. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to serve us. Resistance is futile. The Lii'dra do not appear often. This is because it kind of feels like everybody has to have a vaurca whitelist on an offship antag round for it to happen, and there's little overlap between people with whitelists and people with antag on. They're also, typically, um... Predictable Always loud Immune to being roleplayed with Unmaintained (last updated September 2021) And that's bad because I think they're cool. Here are some headcanons and ideas to help get YOU (yes, even if YOU are human) started on playing Lii'dra in a new and exciting way. Basically, nobody ever thinks about their gimmicks until they roll antag, so I’m thinking for you. Sections will start with italics to denote canon facts, followed by unformatted text which is me expanding on that. I will refer to Lii'dra as a singular individual with capitalized feminine pronouns, because every body in the Hivemind is just an appendage of High Lii'dra. They are not a hive, She is one person. This sounds idiosyncratic to you, but it's actually just correct. Non-Lii’dra may be called defectives, because they are defective. Individual “””Members of Hive Lii’dra””” will be referred to as units. They are not members, because that implies personhood. Appendages. Units. What's Lii'dra up to these days? General Behavior Biology Connected and Disconnected Assimilation and The Bioweapon Vixiat supremacy. This was seven hours of typing, including two accidental rollbacks of half-hours of editing and additions caused by accidental, apparently irreversible taps of ctrl+Z. Badass. I barely play lately, so if you use any of this (or play Lii’dra at all), tell me about it here and you might lure me back.

A general observation, that I’ve yet to see anyone make about Odyssey as it relates to these discussions, and ought to help guide the way we think: There are already certain other servers, quite old and very popular (last I looked), where the gameplay of every round centers around an away site. We should never be TGMC or Colonial Marines (god, please), but they have lessons for us. Means of transport, engaging pilot gameplay, exactly how lame it is to stay aboard and how important it is to get people off the ship.

You can really tell who in this thread has never mained service. Aurorastation 13 is a fictional setting. We can have our cake and eat it too, by emoting eating a cake, emoting it reconstituting itself in front of us for literally no reason, and then emoting having the cake. Everyone on Horizon is already living in deep space and being carried along through the Badlands and Uoeoea-Esa with the shields and thrusters and power down by default and constantly, constantly dealing with greimorians and blobs and allegedly combat drones, somewhere. There is a level of acceptable risk that random bar staff are tolerating already. Going on an Odyssey just means pushing that acceptable risk. No one thinks the bar shotgun should get the DOOM treatment, but a bartender should be authorized to hang around the landing site and hand out miserable visibly writhing cocktails if they please. By some, this is called fun. “What business do you have down here? There could be danger!” Catering, motherfucker. I’m doing the job on my contract, how about you? ”We have MREs” Shut up. ”I don’t care if it’s dirty down here so go back up and mop the pristine floors of the echoing, empty halls of the SCCV Horizon for 2 and a half hours” No. I truly, truly do not care if it seems a bit questionable to drag the cook along on an exploratory mission. Maybe it is! Maybe you’re right. Anyway, if he’s volunteering, bring him. If you find this unimmersive, I’m sure you can overcome that. I’m doing fine here. If it’s Fortnite: Battle Royale down there, yeah fine make him stay up. But as long as nobody’s ever asked to evacuate or shelter in place on Code Yellow, nor even the exceptional and relatively highly dangerous - no, I’m serious - Code Blue, then a Code Blue situation should be permissive to everybody.