dessysalta

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.

I'm not against this, but NanoTrasen feels like the more immediately obvious pick to allow into engineering. There's a thread that predates this one by quite a lot- but either way it would have to be NT or the PMCG, not both (per the 3 depts rule).

I have a couple of playlists dedicated to a few characters, but I've generally only imagined a few songs when it comes to themes for them. Like... Nietzschka: Kira Vazquez: Ungnyeo: ...and whenever I play my Imperial priestess (Svetlana Tvrglavac) I listen to Keygen Church and especially Tenebre Rosse Sangue. Characters I like but have no idea what to use for their theme would be GEVURAH, Zsokuzi Gawgaryn, and Kasa'an Drek'za.

I think The Ill-Fated is one of the best writers on this server, dating back several years of play with extremely well-made characters. Seeing their old whitelist get stripped was a huge surprise, and if they're reapplying I have no doubts they'll be able to satisfy. +1. I want to see how they impress this time around.

Another couple of questions: How different will representatives/execs/consular officers be? And will retired or player-killed characters be able to make returns, provided they aren't actually dead? (I.e. characters that were fired or extradited)

Out of curiosity, are there currently any defined "no-go" groups or characters that simply cannot or will not survive the skip, short of old age? Additionally, will there be sweeping changes to species as a result of the major shift? It's my understanding a lot of characters are really set in stone in the current setting (i.e. a vaurca or corporate IPC is more than very unlikely to end up anywhere else)—what do you think will be done with those characters or their species, provided their owners would like to see them persist? Unrelated: How do you and the rest of staff plan to tackle self-antagonism or character goals? Freelancer settings that retain a great degree of individuality in their characters—for instance, Sojourn—can inspire choices that are primarily motivated OOCly, lack tangible effects, and/or ultimately make someone's round worse without good reasoning. While Aurora can and admittedly does suffer from this on occasion as with any server, these settings, combined with the emphasis placed on character freedom, can exacerbate it. With respect to Sojourn and its mistakes (such as serious issues with meta groups, self antagonism, and an utter lack of crew cohesion), how do you think you can prevent those issues from popping up, assuming they're bound to? Oh, and how do you foresee CCIA sticking around? Will it just be the IAD for the new ship, or something else?

Aside from SS14's administration being a bag of fun (sarcasm), Aurora wouldn't survive because their (SS14's) policies are so horrendously against any kind of conflict or meaningful interactions. That, and every single server plays like /TG/. It's too fast, the mechanics are all wrong for a heavy roleplay setting, and it's just way too much work. I, personally, would never play on any server that migrates from SS13 to SS14; the developers for SS14 (who have final say on pretty much anything that exists within it) have goals that run antithetical to SS13 and its playerbase, and I will never support them. The reason I came over to SS13 is because the devs and administration of SS14 treat it like the new Garry's Mod. Enforce the rules, never make room for gimmicks, ban or kick at the slightest inconvenience, even on MRP, "RDM RDM RDM!". On SS13 the first thing that happened after I accidentally killed a couple people is we had a short talk, I was told how I did so and not to do it again...and that's it. On SS14 I did so by mistake, they were cloned in 60s, and I got banned for 3 days, with absolutely no explanation of what I did wrong. Allegedly, WizDen (the "main" servers) administration has cited nonexistent threats from third parties to justify penal action on servers they dislike. It's a mess. Besides, everyone who shifts over would need to get their notes and warnings redone, import each character with their charges or records, whitelists, not to mention all of the other backend stuff I'm missing. But I'm not a dev, and I hate coding, so I dunno how hard that would be. TL;DR Not that it was going to be the case, but yeah, please don't move to SS14 if you have the chance.