dessysalta

Sounds good, I'll have it fixed within an hour (fingers crossed)!

Do you mean only the front-facing 3x3 "holographic logo", or does that also include the back text? I made the front with the Revenant's helmet in mind. Regardless and if so, I'll change that to something much easier on the eyes- I'd prefer not to remove it entirely, and especially not the holographic text along the back. I'll turn it into a normal suit slot item, yeah.

BYOND Key: dessysalta Discord Username: rem_ratsuken Character Name: Z.I. Nietzschka Item Name: zavodskoi police jacket Item Function(s): Coat. You can't zip it up; those buttons broke a long time ago. Item Description: A long, thick coat of wool and aramid, proudly flashing a holograph of Zavodskoi Interstellar by the chest and 'POLICE' on the back. Fans and other synthetic-accommodating features can be seen or heard along the inside- the most eye-catching is a pauldron-like heatsink mounted to the left shoulder. desc_extended: Corporate-sponsored police forces are a common sight in the Spur, with numerous footholds held by both Zavodskoi and the PMCG in core worlds and 'drifter sectors' alike. Coats such as these are rarely issued to (and in this case, modified to fit) synthetic personnel, and only in such cases where interim management or other minor command is permitted- such as on Vysoka. Fewer still leave the planet they originate from; indicating immense social status, many Zavodskoi units have worked themselves to destruction trying to obtain the rank this jacket indicates. Why is your character bringing this item to work?: Zavodskoi units live and die by their social standing alongside categorical efficiency. Meant to accompany her promotion to Warden, it makes sense that she wouldn't wear the same outfit she's had for over a year now- rather one that better reflects her positions new and old, and instantly gets the point across for other units. Plus, it's far more tailored to her than a brand-new corporate coat is. How did your character obtain this item?: Nietzschka and her sister unit Apostate had both been transferred to the police force in Rahe, Vysoka. Over half a decade of service, as well as numerous calls where Nietzschka would take risks other officers wouldn't, saw her promoted to Sergeant. To date, it's her most prestigious commendation, and she cares very deeply for what the jacket symbolizes: love, growth, and protection. What value does this item have to your character, and what story does it tell?: Nietzschka has very few personal belongings and has even fewer she genuinely cares for. Keepsakes never made much sense until the latter half of service in the RPD, where she was able to branch out from purely distress calls and stings to more social roles alongside them- showing up to schools, patrolling particular districts, and such. Most of her development was on Vysoka, where she was able to care for the civilian populace, smile, and become far more personable. All of her experiences from then until now have shaped her into something she genuinely considers to be dynamic and feeling, even if admitting such a thing would probably get her wiped. Sprites: nietz_coat.dmi ...and the PR with a preview without having to download it if you're so inclined. Additional Comments: This coat was designed to be worn over basic plate carriers, but not anything else. See my custom item app for Kira as a reference, if that works. Obviously I won't wear this over voidsuits, other jackets etc. It'll either be worn on its lonesome or over standard/heavy plating (not specialized; readability is important) and nothing else. Worst case scenario I'll just make it a normal (ish) jacket. Also, got the go-ahead from synthlore here and megacorp lore here, just in case that's relevant. I'm also really tired so if I forgot something, no I didn't.

Basic Information Byond Account: dessysalta Character Name(s): Kira Vazquez, Z.I. Nietzschka, Ungnyeo, Kasa'an Drek'za, God knows how many others. AI Name(s): N/A Discord username + tag: remratsuken (rem_ratsuken) Age: 22 Timezone: PDT When are you on Aurora?: Usually on my days off (I'll volunteer them in private) at or around noon onward. Sometimes as early as 10 AM, sometimes as late as 2 AM. I used to be on constantly/every day, but employment has taken me. Experience How long have you played SS13?: 5-6 years. How long have you played on Aurora: 4 years. How much do you know about SS13 (Baystation build) game mechanics?: Pretty confident with everything that isn't in-depth stuff like detailed supermatter guides or anything to do with science. Not a genius, obviously. Do you have any experience moderating for an SS13 server?: Nuh. Have you read through the criteria thread and believe that you mark off all the criteria?: I think so. Have you ever been banned, and if so, how long and why?: Never. Personality Why do you play SS13?: This game doesn't exist in any way anywhere else. It's the most immersive and fun roleplaying game I have ever touched. I love writing characters based in the lore, I love seeing the community come together, I love making friends here, and I love the development process. I love making sprites and contributing to this game at all. I just love it so much. Why do you play on Aurora?: Likewise, nothing like it exists. There isn't any other server with the absolute mounds of lore, nor one where characters behave in a believable, not-OOCly-abrasive manner. The gamemodes, community, and administration are unique among literally every other server I've played bar none. Besides, this one has the coolest setting and I like what it brings to the table. Plus a bit of nostalgia here and there. What do moderators do?: See my previous application. Administrative equivalent of a whitelisted role. Exists to keep the game flowing smoothly and make sure people are having fun. What does it mean to be a moderator for our server?: It means you're there to show up and make sure the server and players are moving along smoothly and having fun. Remedying bugs, assisting with gimmicks, occasionally dishing out discipline for actions that are too disruptive or ignorant. You're the first line of defense when a new player asks how the hell to light a cigarette, and the last line of defense when half the ship is gone and the people want a break. Why do you want to be a moderator?: I want to contribute to the server and get an idea of what the administrative process is like. Seriously. Big things are coming for Aurora and having been around this long, I want to be part of it. I know that's usually more spriting/lore/other developer territory (and I still contribute in those ways occasionally), but those are a bit too daunting for me right now- at least until the artist role gets established LMAO. I've made friends and acquaintances on the staff team, too, and want to work alongside them. Getting glimpses into the process, hearing what they put up with (and having had them put up with my own shit years prior) makes me want to lend a hand. If nothing else, this is a good precursor for my applications in the other departments of Aurora. What qualities do you possess that would make you a good moderator?: I've worked in customer service? Half joking, but I do strongly empathize with players and I think I'm extremely stubborn when it comes to problem solving. I've also been around awhile and established myself as someone who's more than passing in the community (I hope LOL). Aside from these, I'll echo what I said in my last application a couple years back: show me a nine foot wall and I'll show you a ten foot ladder, and I'm new blood that can offer a unique perspective on things. How well do you handle stress, anger, or insults?: Better. My professional life these past few years has better inoculated me to the spurs of dipshits and life stresses. While I still struggle with short-term frustrations, I think I can take a step back and realize when too much is too much. My current profession in particular is all about de-escalation (likewise, I'll volunteer this in private) so I can't imagine whatever gets thrown my way on here will be much different. I just need to be given a chance to disengage- albeit sometimes my stubbornness still takes over. I'm always working on that. Anything Else You Want to Add: Keeping it short and concise this time. Get me in there, boss. Hope I can impress.

As always, cool news and good stuff. Love to see where the server's going and I think this is going to be fucking awesome no matter what. That said, still wanted to raise some questions myself: I'm curious if this means we'll effectively never see another Secret (or other antagonist-based) round ever again, or if they'll just be more uncommon, etc. Antagonists, while unsustainable, offer certain upsides you won't get from contracts- namely being all player-controlled and especially freeform compared to a niche theme we're likely to expect in certain sectors. Likewise, I'm curious if freeform stuff will be expected at all from contracts- for instance, will Storytellers be able to make custom contracts that function as pseudo-antagonist gimmicks? Antagonists primarily allow for underrepresented facets of the lore to show up once in awhile. Losing that would be rough. Not getting caught up in the little stuff like you said, I promise!! That said, for awhile I've been wondering if job numbers across the board (on the Horizon or not) would be increased, or policies put in place to allow more players in if they don't get their role- like OOCly allowing off-duty characters to get in on the fun even if their department is fully staffed. I know the current blurb on "don't disallow volunteers on expeditions" covers this by and large, but I wanted to know if it was going to change substantially in the coming years. How will corporate contractors, suck-ups, haters, etc. be represented? As it stands, the Horizon is all contractors, meaning there's an absolute slew of different groups that do contracting work in lore, and by extent for each character on-ship to be working under. If we were to mostly be united under the guise of a freelancer, does that mean none of us get to be outwardly affiliated with other corporations/groups aside from those who work for them in assigned contracting roles? The inter-branch tension is certainly going to be cool, but I'm concerned it's going to limit the mercenaries on-ship to being purely personal mercenary go-getters instead of, say, John Personality Cult's strongest warrior, a group of Ringspire nerds, whatever. Will corporate paraphernalia exist for mercenaries to take, wear, or display? What about symbology or uniforms of other groups? Basically, I'm curious if we're only going to see security teams consisting of rag-tag mercenaries or if we'll occasionally get groups of 2-3+ people who work in security but dress like/openly display allegiance to one group or another. Aside from that, I'm excited. Very excited. Keep it up, guys.

dessysalta

Unabridged thoughts: As an antagonist player, I'd like to see abilities restructured such that they're not a grab-bag with arbitrary gates based on a single universal action; I think there should be breadth and depth of choice as it pertains to which powers you get for what reason. Basically, I don't want feeding to be the only way to unlock new abilities and I think existing abilities need to be reworked to be more situational rather than broad utility that's used by everyone and their mother. I'd also like to see vampire go from being vampire and more of an all-encompassing supernatural. Basically, I'd like for there to be choices aside from playing the most obvious vampire archetypes, or at least make those abilities and archetypes more mechanically interesting. I think these choices would allow for more personal freedom in gimmicks and incentivize roleplay over strict mechanics. Part of the appeal of gamemodes like Traitor and Mercenary are that they're incredibly free-form and let you do literally anything and trade for whatever the magical shopping cart doesn't have, and relatively recently have received psionic starters and such inside the uplink to allow for even more creativity to blossom (with discussions regarding changeling and vampire starters having been made as well, though I forget their consensus- either way, I support those too for the same reasons). The more options a "vampire" has, and the more people who can execute unique ideas there are, the better. Likewise, please compensate IPCs and Diona. I don't like readying up, as an antagonist or otherwise, to be completely stonewalled each round because of silicode preventing the clean inclusion of it. I would really like to see IPCs and Diona be given the ability to bite and drink blood, and then the players allowed to flavor it however the hell they want. These two in particular (unorthodox mechanical species + the literal blood-drinking species in canon) would be amazing to have on the roster, and if unique abilities for them were implemented, all the better. (Imagine a more potent Diona bite that forces your character into an emotional state? An IPC that runs off of blood and can meld it with its steel to create weird fucked up blood-metal-alloy weapons, or turn humans into biomechanical thralls from some kind of fucked up virus? Stuff like that.) As a non-antagonist, as it pertains to one of my previous suggestions I would really rather there be other abilities or items than combat and escape tools. As it stands, some of my worst memories of any antagonist come from them and changelings—I don't speak for everyone, but I can say that "I'm going to be bloodthirsty and then frenzy about an hour in" is something that's been seen a frustratingly disproportionate amount of times over the years. I believe this is due to the constraints of the extremely combat-oriented abilities with absolutely nothing else (not even an uplink or access to exploitables) to compense. I can't remember the last time, if any, that a vampire round held a genuine narrative and wasn't just "my character is a vampire now", "give me bloodpacks or die", or "I'm going to frenzy 40 minutes in". As both, I want to see more narrative options that might or might not be strictly aligned to the "vampire" theme. Let me or others do weird freak cult (the generic kind, not the Nar'sien one. Although...) nonsense, be some demon from hell, a half-dead geist, a fey-touched weirdo, or other mystical bullshit. Revenant (the gamemode) plays to the supernatural themes but never gets voted and is incredibly antiquated because of its lack of round-start antagonists (instead spawning them in via ghost role) and general lack of fun without adminbus. To those ends, the more weird magical nonsense you can do, the better. Besides, what other gamemode implements magic, the unnatural, or religious as core themes? It's only cult, and I want more variety than that. It would allow for more bizarre and "out there" gimmicks that break the mold and flip the setting on its head (like cult). Astute observers may notice all of the supernaturals I mentioned (demon, geist, "fey-touched" being a replacement for another that I'll explain in a sec) are references to White Wolf/Paradox Interactive, the same people who made Vampire: The Masquerade. All of the weird, cryptic, gothic stuff they have in their books is fucking delicious as fluff and lore. Obviously at a point what's being added far exceeds the original scope of "just make the Vampire mode more Vampire", but I can't but attest to the idea of getting more gritty mechanics or flavor items as it pertains to what would basically be Aurora's Demon: The Descent, Geist: The Sin-Eaters, Changeling: The Lost, etc. It would just be cool as hell from a variety and narrative standpoint; at least for vampire specifically, I think the massive amount of stuff you can either import or take inspiration from as it pertains to White Wolf would offer an insane amount of variety while retaining the intrigue-heavy roots of vampires in fiction. Bonus points if you do anything with Exalted. I could talk at length about their abilities and how to implement them, but the long short of it is look into V:TM's "Disciplines" and then work your way around the rest of the books. Changeling: The Lost, for instance, has Contracts instead of Disciplines, which are still magical effects they can enact at will. Exalted has Charms. etc etc Anywho: TL;DR I'd like more abilities for variety and flavor, reworks of existing combat abilities OR additional abilities that are strictly non-combat, to see IPCs and Diona compensated or included in some way, and the supernatural part of vampire to be the most touched on rather than the idea of vampire existing as solely vampires. The reason the other gamemodes are popular is because they're very free-form and offer a lot more than meets the eye. Pretty please, give me more supernatural stuff to play with- I can easily and very happily imagine a world where people vote Mercenary for canon-derived gimmicks whereas they'd vote Vampire (or Supernatural etc.) for otherworldly, bizarre, or mind-fucky stuff.

and unrelated:

OR, be et tropyckal, it may have DYUERS COLOURS. +1. I LOOOVE Enchanted's characters and think they're one of the best writers out there.