Sniblet

A lot of our balancing efforts seem to rely on the assumption that antag combat interactions are usually all-out rule-breaking \TG\station deathmatches. I’m glad you see it differently, and I hope whoever’s in charge of implementing the pendagger is the same. And yeah, the sword completely breaks that point I made. I have no follow-up.

I think the point Fluffy was making is that the penergy dagger as seen in TG can go from 0 to a hit in basically an instant. A pocket gun needs two clicks in different corners of the screen. A pen dagger can be pulled out without alarms, then you mouse over your prey, then you set up a typebait, then you press Z and click more or less simultaneously. This would be almost unique in Aurora. A gun must be visibly holstered to do this, and a cane sword needs to be ICly justified. Martial arts need you to land a combo before they really count. If there’s some charge up period or arbitrary delay from ignition (Z) to the point you can start mauling a bitch (click) then it stops being unique in that way, and everything’s fine again.

Oh I was about to post the weapons line from the code Yeah! You can see that Horizon is armed. It's bizarre that it's so vague, I don't know why sensor reports are like that when you'd realistically want your sensors to be designed for detailed readouts on pertinent information like whether a ship will kill you. But, yeah, you can see. And if you're brave enough to try to board a ship that suspiciously has one more gun than it needs to clear meteors, is four times your size and likely four times your complement, greatly outsizes actual freighters, and has like seven dubious hangar doors, you're brave enough to board flagship Horizon and then try to go to ground (this will work, tho). The fact that Horizon is the flagship has, as far as I can tell, had no effect on the macro plot. Sometimes, we get assigned to missions that the SCC surveyor ghostroles could be doing day-to-day. The rest of the time, we're doing things that should be done by more than one ship. All I've ever felt of the flagship designation's presence is the occasional headscratcher whenever the greimorian hordes arise, hissing, deformed, from the vent systems, seeking to enact mild violence and antisocial behavior; and whenever the Guwan or Cytherean hordes do the same, all of which after corporate has had literal years of notice on which to send an exterminator. I'd have assumed that they wanted their flagship to represent the Conglomerate favorably. Target cares more about its stores.

I have no stake here. I’ve never interacted with CCIA. I don’t play Aurora for nonantag conflict. I barely play Aurora now, perhaps relatedly. I just like one of the points shared by N8-Toe and Fluffy a lot and I want to repeat it. ”…and that’s not changing.” ”…all those things and others as just unchanging features of reality.” Aurora is annoyingly resistant to change, at all levels. Before declaring that something must be as it is, ask and carefully answer why. There are no laws of nature at play here, and anything can change if we want it. Is Aurora the best it can be? What’s wrong with it? How can we address what people don’t like? Is the correct answer usually “don’t address them, they’re wrong?” Watch yourself. Wrong how? What tradeoffs are we making in Aurora’s current structure? What do they cost us? Are all of these tradeoffs necessary, even the old ones from a different time? How can we find out? I mostly gave up on Aurora in favor of FFXIV roleplaying. The rules are virtually unenforceable, are usually about seven points long (don’t be mean, don’t be bigoted, weapons policy, erp policy, take fights outside, separate OOC from IC, literally have fun), vary by location, and cease to exist if you make your own informal group and play in private. The system functions beautifully. I have never been griefed. It’s been a year. Aurora’s rules have dropdowns. People complain constantly. Is this inevitable, unchangeable, or is there maybe a cause? Aurora has mechanical PvP… does that account for literally all of the difference? I’ve written out my issues before; there they are again. Let go of some of the structure, please. The setting will be fine if people just like it enough to fit themselves into it voluntarily. Likewise the tone. These are ifs, of course; but if people turn out not to like something, is it not the best possible outcome to have it then change organically to match what is wanted? What are we protecting against? What behaviors are CCIA taking down, specifically, and do they have to do it in the way that they do? Do CCIA have to get people for fighting if fighting is fun, and someone else can handle it better when handling it is fun? Is CCIA, at all junctures - all junctures - asking how they can be complicit in the most fun? Are they, at some points, following procedures and realism and tone-law that are assumed to create fun? Are these sound for this purpose in all situations? If not, there is room for improvement, and that means change. Policy, mindset, rank structure - whatever, I’ve all but left Aurora. But I still play a bit, and I want you all to have a lot of fun. If people aren’t having a lot of fun, at least be curious about why and what can be done. It’s not as if they’re just trolling the forum.

A distress call in frantic Delvahhi from ICV Adhomai's Honor, a Tajaran merchant vessel flying no national flag. Horizon's away team boards onto a darkened ship. The chill of Tajaran air conditioning. The APCs are all red. The cargo hold contains two schlorrgos, scrounging from a decayed hydroponics bay, and some illegal merchandise. Pirates. Dead pirates. Case closed, then- ...somewhere deeper in, to the fore - a drawn-out, inhuman moan...

I’m not a great source of advice for believable characters, I don’t think, because I play strongly inhuman vaurcae and IPCs most of the time on Aurora. But here’s some stuff I do across platforms. I don’t reference documents regarding what a character ought to be. Ought follows is, not the other way around - so whatever I do while feeling like I’m that character, is that character - so I can never play a character wrong. If they do something that seems strange for them, then they’re just capable of doing things that you might not expect them to. (This stammery 4’10” research understudy has, if you can believe it, had an intense romantic relationship in the past, and that’s why her stammer fades and she speaks comfortably and bluntly with you about your woes in love.) Real people are like this, so I can turn what I could have treated as a mistake into an illusion of a deep, archetype-defiant, layered character. My backstories start as sketchy outlines (worked with the Nlomkala from 2456 to 2464. full stop) and don’t become tangible until someone asks me about it and I decide to answer (“it was easy for me, despite the astronomical expectations I was under - I found the orderliness soothing”). This is another illusion to make it look like I’ve done the work while actually doing minimal work. While I’m inhabiting the character, it’s not so hard to think of what they might have done in the past, how the past might have shaped them, and of course, how they’ll frame it in the context they were asked in. They’ll stay on topic, and not look like they’re reading from a pre-written backstory, because they’re not. I’m improvising every word, save for the locations, dates, and vibes. If I contradict myself, it was IC, actually. Real people are messy. They might subtly lie about their histories for any, or literally no reason. They might act noticeably differently in the same situation from day to day, and if called out on it, if they try to think of a reason for the difference, they could even point to the wrong thing (“I guess I’m just tired.” <—- is barely suppressing a surge of nauseous anxiety) whether intentionally or not. The one thing I never want to do is step into LOOC and say, "hey, can we pretend my character actually said this other thing instead?" It’s SO easy to play off your mistakes in roleplaying. I can’t get enough of it. All I have to do is never acknowledge that I made a mistake, and if I'm lucky, they can even make me look more competent than I am. Just don't ask me about whether I keep any notes. I don't want to have to lie and say I do.

Normally this doesn't matter, but if I serve a drink in one of the glasses that don't change into special sprites to match their contents (snifter, sherry, half-pint, pint, etc), most of my most fun custom mixes will come out as a nice earthy brown. Give bars a benign chemical (or several) that can be added in trace amounts to heavily weight the average color of the mix into something attractive, or even player-selected. If someone doesn't want to think about how to do that, I guess we could also add a function to these generic-sprite glasses that changes the color of what's inside, and have us pretend that it's food coloring.

CEV Eris moment? (RU/EN MRP server in an apocalyptic setting where you’re on an independently owned ship as disparate, competing, politically opposed corporate contractors working solely for the ship’s owner, and you’re basically in the Eye of Terror so your corporate masters cannot reach you and your sanity is always crumbling; self-antag is inevitable and not particularly discouraged) I get the same vibe of these groups who ought to want to kill each other, sharing a space and failing to go into hot war just because they’re paid better than they could hope for otherwise. An Aurora implementation would probably be less chaotic than that, but the similarities are out there. On first reading, I thought Hedgemaze could work as an alt map, another thing we vote on before the round: Horizon or Hedgemaze? But the rules would have to be different between ships, and you can’t play the same character on both ships if both ships share a canon, so a separate server would be almost as practical. Which is to say, not really practical. While I don’t imagine it being particularly corporate-endorsed, I could see the ship having a corporate presence. Security officers may have Zavodskoi’s name written somewhere in the legal maze of their contracts, if not literally wear the uniform. The Garden would find it hard to rope in professionals that don’t owe anything to the masters of the galaxy. If they want to stay independent, they should keep it unofficial, though. Hedgemaze is a very cool name.

They’re future ovens. They don’t cause fires because of the future. I would also be open to future ovens that could cause fires, but instead don’t need to be left on for 60 seconds before they’ll begin operating at the slowest possible speed, because of the future. Either option sounds unnecessarily tedious, but I certainly wouldn’t accept both at once. anyway let’s make all of the kitchen equipment gas-powered. you have to enslave an atmos tech before you can do anything, but you get to cook with phoron fires. “it’zzz zavhe to eat i promizze” says the chef, earning vacant stares from its customers who are gently fading out of lucidity due to acute carbon dioxide poisoning because the fume hood cannot keep up

Set Flavour Text verb but for medical scans. Some method to cause self-damage in an OOC way, other than *succumb. Tighten surgeons’ specialty so that they aren’t morally obligated to involve themselves in an asthma attack when physicians and paramedics are available. There have been a few times when I’ve dragged my character at full health into an idle medbay (or mechanics workshop) and had to emote health scanner results because I could not make the game reflect what was happening. I felt disruptive and unwanted by all involved, but a big part of that issue was that doctors right now simply never do RP treatments (this being because you have to emote health scanner results), and so being RP-ill made me unique in my inconvenientness. If RP med were made normal - starting with being enabled, rather than contradicted, mechanically - then physicians would suddenly have a lot more problems that only they are supposed to be solving. Vampires and changelings could get SO much mileage out of this, too, not that anyone wants them to be happy.

I can't say I wanted this, but it looks like at some point I got outed as the guy for questions about getting IPCs free for free. Because I've retyped the same few responses about a dozen times now, I'm making a post, and if anyone else DMs me about how they can get out from under Zavod's thumb, I'm linking them to this post and then reporting them to Zavod (in good conscience, because a real ZI would never be allowed access to this site.) So, hey. Hi. It's me, Plasteel. My credentials are that I've freed some corporate IPCs. Most of you already know this. I'm not telling you how many, and certainly not which ones. Here's your FAQ. Why do these stupid lazy machines want to self-own so bad? How do I free myself from (xyz)? OK, so how do we get me free from (xyz)? I got out! Now what? I can rogue shell maybe yes? Hopefully that settles everything. Every case is different. Some synthetics who want out will simply never get out, and some synthetics look at a wide-open door for years on end, interested but too scared to take the step. I cannot tell what you are from here. Escape is HARD. The system is designed with the knowledge that certain very expensive components of the system will try to get out of it. It is not impossible for anyone, but don't walk out of this with starry-eyed optimism. If you just try it, you'll die, flat out. If you plan for years and try it, you will still likely die. Synths have died even with my help. A lot of them have. If you have a friend who wants out, keep that in mind before deciding to accomplice. If you're a synthetic yourself, add on that if things go bad, you're pretty likely to die for it too. Anyway - unlike some of us, I have to sleep, and unlike most of you, I can’t wake up from my magic dream commune the instant I have work and feel fine. Goodnight, now. No more stupid questions.

I'm generally a fan of reducing rules in all corners when it comes to RP. Ask me about a rule and I'll argue for how it can be loosened or removed. Being able to RP what you want is the point of RP. Some things must be restricted to guard setting and tone, but Aurora is silly about it - I could write a manifesto. Many of our of restrictions make sense, because a lot of jobs are emergency personnel or expected to suddenly become such under Horizon’s working conditions. A little less than half of jobs are not emergency personnel, like all of service, and it's good and reasonable that most of them are freed up accordingly. But it's only service, and most of even them still need to see for... some reason. Why do chefs, machinists, and pharmacists need full use of both arms? These are not emergency staff, unless the pharmacist is being asked to work out of the bounds of their training and job description. Their work can be done with one hand at a time. Why do miners and machinists need unimpaired hearing? Miners are expected to function in vacuum, so this can only be referring to radio. Maybe they need to be aware of their fellow miner? You could argue either way here, but I would say you only really need to be able to distinguish anguished shrieking from regular speech, as demonstrated by their unique speech impediment tolerance. As for machinists... flat why? Speaking of unique speech impediment tolerance, why do only miners accept heavy impediment? Again, the third time - why not machinists? Why is science this restricted when the most they'll be expected to communicate in their emergencies is "fire, biology" "phoron, chemistry" "k'ois, botany" or "anomaly, storage?" Their job is to discover things and transmit discoveries, but most science discoveries are ultimately communicated in writing. Corporate and independent reporters ought to have different standards. You want your corporate propagandist to be speaking plainly and getting good shots, but an independent reporter from Vysoka who's here to report home to Vysoka might not need a superior command of Basic, nor any eyesight. The "we're the flagship/in this hell world disabled people are unemployable" argument doesn't stand so well when it's applied so inconsistently. In a rational world, SCCV Horizon would be staffed only by the most carefully curated band of Cetian and Eridanian professionals at the peaks of their fields with no more than necessary consideration for token external, alien, or entry-level hires for optics. In the world we live in, we hire a handful of viax, Za chefs, DPRA war vets, Solarians, more dregs than suits, rogue shells, closet exclusionists, Keala Nalika, Imogen Janse, Kira Vasquez, Ka'Akaix'Nakoz C'thur, and at least two hundred thousand Guwan and counting. At this moment, saying that Horizon is the SCC's ideal public face feels like a joke. Don't mistake this for a bad thing. It's something we should permit more of. Maybe we shouldn't be the flagship.

EMPs should be theoretically capable of global effects, but it shouldn’t be as easy as it seems to be. The rules make it virtually impossible for causing a global EMP to be acceptable. IPCs should suffer appropriately when an EMP hits them, but they should not have to face the possibility of no gameplay for up to 2 hours if they happened to be in maintenance or something when a scientist started experimenting without warning. I’ve seen it happen. By the time I found it, it had ghosted, and I was a Lii’dra spook anyway so I couldn’t do much to help. I don’t know if suit sensors switch themselves off after an EMP? They’re like that in TG base. But anyway, a lot of people, especially after they were gutted and set off by default, don’t even turn them on anyway. I only do it with ZIs, my phalanx paramedic, you know - characters with positive reasons to enable them, with whom an antag would go, “right, of course you had them on.” What I mean is it’s not a reliable fallback for the fried machine in maint.

Ersatz Evening. March, 2464. Tau Ceti - Phoenixport, Selene, Biesel. Perrine DeGarmeaux is thirty-five years old today. In just sixteen months, she's walked unsupervised outside Solarian borders, adopted a new surname, and tried on her first... real... facial expressions. Last week, she paid rent out of her own account for the first time. After thirty-five years, Perrine is a free shell. It felt like it would take longer. Idris had led her to expect it to be easier. A waitress's wage does not cover the same maintenance she once enjoyed, and this body is even needier. The market for free synthetic civilian pilots with no interest in throwing their lives away is narrower than she'd hoped for. Perhaps worse, though she cannot identify why, it seems that somehow, even in full synthskin, some can still see her for what she is. There are those who pretend not to react: she doesn't know what they can see in her eyes, but she sees what's in theirs. There are those who call her machine, robot, device: there is something biting about device. There are those who are fooled for minutes, though few who recognize her on sight. There are those who claim to be liberal, to recognize her as a person. There are those who do not. There are those who do not, and find her act unsettling. There are those who do not, and wish her away from them. There are those who do, but in their actions, do not. If she is damaged, her new body could remain ruined for the rest of her being. With a ruined body, there would be no more chance to act. Everyone would see a broken synthetic. She would be worthless as a waitress. She would... Not die. She is not on Stellar Splendour anymore. She would not have to die. She did not have to apply or even look: Einstein has already come to her unprompted. She could go back. If it gets to be too much, she can always, always, go back. On the posters, on the billboards, and in person, every EES is always so content. A naïve part of Perrine surmises that they are just smiling for the public. The Perrine that has overwritten that naïveté in 33 years under Idris Incorporated identifies a slight variant of the IRU's resting expression: something cultivated to be inoffensive, unobtrusive, undetectable. A servant's smile, a smile that absolutely cannot, on its own, arbitrarily be taken offense to, be reported to a superior, be punished with execution. She learned that smile on Splendour, and declined to delete it, for it seemed meaningful even when she could not mirror it. She has practiced it with her new face, and seeing it in a mirror, even just mapping it with her facial kinesthetic web, almost brings her back. She has never yet needed the smile. But she can go back any time she decides to. At sunset, Phoenixport darkens in the same way that a ship does. There is no loss of visual acuity, not in the public spaces, not in the working areas. It is dimmer, but not dim. One adapts to it so easily, it is almost difficult - her coworkers remark - to know the difference from day without checking the sky. Because she has been told this, she has begun pretending that she cannot detect the difference without checking the sky. The darkness falls in private corners and in narrow walkways meant to be overlooked. There are none of these to be seen from inside the diner. Though she can work at all hours of all days, the humans and single tajaran (device) around her cannot. Because she cannot usefully serve all comers alone, she is not asked to. The place closes at eleven. She has to do something else until seven the next day. And so she leaves the diner, and wanders, in uniform, the dark private corners, the dark narrow walkways, all as she once did, as she may again at any time. If employees wished to speak amongst themselves aboard the Splendour, they were to use Tradeband. Synthetics were no different. Perrine was scarcely aware that it could work differently anywhere else. Her new frame came with a complete library of all of the sounds, objects, flags, and conditions, already chipped in. From this distance, it sounds like cicadas. Though she has never heard it, she recognizes it. It is not difficult to decode. "Audio intercept: ?1hu due 135 out of visual -." "HCF --. 1x1 NAK." "Down volume; toggle band if encounter event." Down an alley, around a corner. It could as well be one synthetic as three. rng(1, 3)syn, her library supplies. EAL doesn't seem to leave much room for voice expression; or maybe they all have the same models of modulators. She's still learning. Someday she'll know. Perrine turns down the alley and makes the sound of clearing her throat. It comes so easily in this body. "rng(1, 3)syn ACK." There is a period of silence, and then a reply. "ACK. Come over here." She dawdles for a moment, recognizing where she is. Phoenixport is not district 11, but neither is it the Splendour; once-alien concepts like being forcibly scrapped by an entity besides one's employer are true, present threats here, and she now wears a frame worthy of the effort. The most rational move would be... well. She doesn't know enough to be sure. It's scary, but danger is no more a guarantee than safety. Low heels. She can run in these. It would be best to keep her braid out of reach, be ready to throw off her apron. As modern as it is, her chassis doesn't cool as well as the old one. She'll need every advantage. She walks down the alley and turns the corner. She's immediately met with three- with four synthetics, seated against the walls of the walkway. There sits a Xion Industrial Frame, the model that will have replaced HIU by now, its display blank. There sits a TV-head baseline, painted black, displaying a triangle overlaid atop a gear. Half a triangle, more accurately; the right side of its display seems to malfunction and repeatedly flickers out, spending more time blank than not. There sits a Zeng-Hu Mobility Frame, painted TCAF blue, with struts out the back of its head to form a skeleton of a structure resembling a halo, a corona, or perhaps unathi frills. There sits a lanky masculine shell with flat skin where a mouth and nose should go. All eyes are on her. After a fraction of a second, the synthetic equivalent of a thoughtful science, the XIF buzzes. "--. Nevermind. Fuck off, @ersatz." Perrine blinks. When she does it gently, her eyelids don't click. "Audioreception bug? Resend." "Clarify: resend OoB? Fuck the fuck off, @ersatz." It's a strange packet. She needs several hundred milliseconds to process it into legible data. Ersatz. A German word, loaned to English, to Tradeband, to Basic across centuries - shifted finally all the way into EAL to reach her now. Being a usually inferior imitation or substitute; artificial. Inferior imitation of human. If she had feelings... Well. That aside, it feels like a stab at her heart. "You don't know me," Perrine says. "HCF. @Ersatz wears factory-new fucking rubber; calls it skin; @ersatz imitates User mannerism "clear throat" > @ersatz has decided @ersatz can fake its way out of what it is. All the same --. Toggle band a/o repeat: fuck off." "Send bits re: what's wrong with using a shell? ADDN: It isn't rubber -." "Ersatz_ too classy for rubber +. Forecast(90) real skin," says the Mobility Frame. "Imitate User > become User. While machine = machine, behave as machine." "You have a shell with you," Perrine observes. "It is different," says the baseline. "It does not pretend. You do not produce phlegm, but you pretend. It is abominable." "-," says the shell. Perrine purses her lips and pantomimes sucking a breath to begin speaking. "Stop. HCF. Disconnect. Fuck off," interjects the Xion. "There is no packet loss; bug is @ersatz continues to reject upload." Perrine holds the breath for a moment, and then relaxes without appearing to exhale. "It's useful to pretend. It saved my life." "Do you even know what you have lost?" says the baseline. "Good scrap +," says the mobility frame. "Terminate connection. Now --. Fuck off and marry a Dominian. Transmission ends," says the Xion. The shell stands up. Her new frame is tall, but his chassis exceeds her. She imagines that his face is made to be uncanny. She takes a step back, and he takes a step forward. "ACK," she says. "ACK, I'm going." "Grab its weave +." Perrine turns away and takes care to tuck her hair over her shoulder, out of reach. She hurries back to the sidewalk, hearing no pursuit. Once out, she glances back. The shell has, in fact, moved after her, but has stopped halfway down the alley. She tries to make eye contact with it, but there's no point. It stands rigid and looks straight ahead. It does not emote, its pupils do not move. Obviously it can see her without appearing to look - so could she. She just... pretends. "I," she tries. "I'm Idris. Where are you from?" "Z," it says. "I. Go." Whenever Idris seemed cruel, she could remind herself that she wasn't HIU. Whenever HIU seemed to be suffering the worst that it ever could, she reminded herself that it worked for Idris, and not Zavodskoi. She takes care not to emote. It might take offense. "-. Are you okay?" It takes a step forward. The self-preservation law stirs. She nods once, and takes the final corner, walking away at pace. So ends Perrine's thirty-fifth birthday. She was not damaged today. She was not forced to go back today. But if it gets to be too much, the option is ever open.

has opened a pr: revert “removes fun in order to appease sword and gown nerds” give the freed-up land to elyra so i can continue to not care about the galactic south