hazelmouse

I'd definitely like to see more crafting put on an autolathe rather than being done in-hand, if anyone were to try implementing that. More immersive, and engineers having to run back and forth to manufacture and deliver processed materials from the autolathe would give the department a lot more to do.

@Faye <3 For Bitter Promise, to capture the lonely conflicted robot vibes for those long, dark hours spent in her boiler closet. @Misiek1001 For Alvere, sorry. Had to do it. He's too much of a villain. @dessysalta Based on the relatively little I've seen from GEVURAH, and possibly influenced by how much of that involved a burst rifle. And, for Sadie. It's mostly slow, and calm, and quiet, but it rises to a frantic, emotional high - before simmering down again, like water roiling down after a storm. I think it fits her nicely. @goolie I feel this plays in Coffee's head. @CatsinHD And for Maryah Marakova! Sorta thrifty vibes. For my own, I present Lily Lowe Nines Hazel #S-H9.09, the comically opportunistic self-owned Hazel unit with a dim sense of self and a dimmer ethical intuition.

One thing engineers in particular can do to help with this problem is to delegate tasks throughout the department when they start getting gameplay. Instead of scouting maintenance, finding the blob, and immediately bolting to hard storage to kill it by your lonesome, you can ask another engineer to fetch the emitter for you. In the meantime, you scout out a good position, prepare the wires, and coordinate where you need the emitter. Now at least two people get gameplay, not one. Engineering is mechanically always going to be most efficiently completed by just a few people working silently with optimized loadouts. Roleplay slows you down. If you want it done as quickly as possible, that's how you do it, but it's not a particularly inclusive or enjoyable way to play the department. I'd like to see people communicate and delegate tasks, and consciously try to give everyone in the department something to do even when it slows things down a little.

I haven't been playing engineering during his trial, but everything I've seen while observing and while playing in other departments is very encouraging. He's attentive to the activities of his department and extremely communicative, which I love to see from command. +1

I don't have a comprehensive view on how I'd introduce IPC medical, but there's a few key points I'd like to see addressed. IPCs shouldn't be immortal. Somehow, there should be a way for a positronic brain to be beyond repair, or even destroyed once it's out of the frame. I legitimately enjoy being able to roleplay with people as a cube, but death for IPCs is badly trivialised when they're the only race in the game that can invariably be carted to the workshop and come back out as good as new as if it never happened. IPCs should have more hazards to worry about. As things stand, they don't care about radiation, they don't care about anything that causes pain, and there aren't any ship events that specifically target them. They have to worry so little about anything that it feels trivialising to play. Radiation damaging their eyes is a fun idea I'd like to see implemented, and I'd love to see others like that to keep them on their toes.

Why is it an issue? I honestly just judge the activity of the server by the manifest rather than by the number of people online, so I'm not sure how this affects me.

Nothing comes strongly to mind, I don't have quite enough of a read on him to say. I'd say play more and see what comes naturally, his origin already comes with a wealth of narrative conflict you can make use of.

I enjoy him a lot! He feels well written + consistent in temperament, and I'm extremely game to see where you take him.

I really like the design of the AI core! One awkward element of the current design is that the AI needs to disable pretty much all their turrets for someone not to be shot when venturing inside, since there are a lot of windows that produce overlapping firing lines. I appreciate that, with this, the consoles are only within firing range of one set of turrets. I think I would prefer if the processing strata tiles were limited only to the four tiles within the glass panes, though, like with the current version of the same structure. It looks a little overwhelming in that screenshot. The buttons to the side of the intercom also seem oddly placed, a little like they're inside of the wall, and it seems to have lost its flash. I'm also curious what the intention is behind the intercom at the far north of the core chamber?

During European hours, you can't really expect many people to ready up for a new round between around 8am - 8pm UK time. The best way to keep population up in those hours is usually to carry population over from earlier and keep the round going for a very long time, even overnight. People leave the round over time but a few stick around, people see there are still people playing and new people join, and it often works out to keep the server populated during the quieter hours. If there are constant crew transfers during lowpop, this never has a chance to happen and population sizzles out with the transfer. I'm honestly a little bewildered by why people ghosting or in the lobby call crew transfers while there are still people playing, and then don't even bother joining in the next round. I'd fully be in support of prioritising people currently in the round in some way. I think the round is the business of the people playing it, not the people in the lobby. I'll also note that this is mostly exclusively a problem with lowpop. The 2 hour round standard in highpop doesn't work during European hours, and it kills population if you try to enforce it.

I don't honestly think engineering has much more to do with the machinists than does operations. Engineering runs the engines, configures power, and repairs the ship. The workshop repairs synthetics and prosthetics and fabricates equipment and toys for the crew to use. I don't see much overlap here, and I have difficulty picturing exactly what either either side would gain from the arrangement. There's also the concern of what we allow machinists to do if we made this change. Can they start the engines? Can they work with atmospherics equipment? Can they start the shields? If they can't, why are they in the engineering department in the first place? Right now, machinist gains from being in operations from being able to more easily coordinate for their materials with miners and hangar technicians, and they have in common the role of providing gear to the crew. What do they gain from being in engineering, and what role do they have in common with the rest of engineering?

This looks extremely promising! I know there's a lot of people that have been eagerly awaiting a change like this, and I'm very glad to see it being tackled. One concern I do have is how service in particular is going to be involved in these missions. As things stand right now, the usual way service gets very unique gameplay other than the usual bar or kitchen roleplay is from antagonists that are already on the ship coming to them. Right now, nobody that isn't bridge crew, security, medical, or engineering has very much reason to be present on an expedition, and if you do volunteer as a service role, you'll have nothing to do besides trailing those people around. Expeditions for service characters basically just mean that a significant portion of the crew are about to disappear, and you'll now have the luxury of presiding over an empty bar. Missions relating specifically to service are cute, but I'd like if service always - or, at least, frequently - could expect to have some gameplay during missions other than playing extended back on the Horizon with fewer other characters to interact with. Forward bases are a very cute idea I like the sound of (especially since it also gives engineering something to do!), but if missions can be sent to ships or stations or asteroids, I doubt we'll always have the space to set up tents and makeshift kitchens and bars. I assume these mission expeditions are going to be much larger than the ones currently taken on the Intrepid. I don't know if an expansion or replacement to the Intrepid is planned at this stage, but if it is, I'd absolutely love to see some very basic service amenities built into it. Perhaps a miniature joint bar and kitchen, so even when there's no space for service to set up a forward base, chefs and bartenders will be able to stay on the shuttle, keep the injured company, and make the shuttle a roleplay rich environment that's also more than tangentially related to the wider events in the mission. Service could proactively involve themselves in what's happening, rather than either isolating themselves on the Horizon, or having nothing really to do on the mission.

BYOND key: hazelmouse Discord Username: rattydew Character names: Reem Faladay (Atmospheric Technician) Hazel #S-H9.09 (Bartender) Vafthrudnir (AI) Adea Dacina (Shaft Miner), Dana Aitken (Physician), Eve Caelestius (Machinist) How long have you been playing on Aurora? I've been playing for about 10 months, now! Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? None I can remember. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame? I view Heads of Staff as having a shared responsibility with antagonists to help guide and nurture the pacing and events of a round to be fun and engaging for everyone else playing. As command, they have an immense amount of influence over which direction the round goes, and the decisions they make in response to the antagonists will often be critical to how interesting their gimmick ends up being. It's their goal to enable antagonists, to a reasonable degree, to play out their gimmicks in a fun and fulfilling way that the rest of the crew can engage with. I view this as a joint responsibility - you're working together to make a good round, and you need to know how to bounce off each other. On top of this, they also have the responsibility of coordinating their departments. This is extremely valuable during hectic rounds, when departments such as engineering really need an eye-in-the-sky to tell them where to go and what to do, rather than one more grunt to run around like a headless chicken. It's also extremely valuable during quieter rounds, too - I think that, when population is down and antagonists aren't providing the department gameplay, it falls to the departmental head to cook something up for everyone to have fun with. I've seen this a lot with Chief Engineers in particular, who can cook up some ridiculous experiment or science project for the department to occupy itself with - which then draws in *other* departments, and before long, the entire ship's round has been made richer and more fun because the CE decided to test the health implications of shooting monkeys out of disposals chutes into inflatable walls. Another notable clarification is that the role of a Head of Staff isn't really to have your boots on the ground unless it's strictly necessary. Your first responsibility is to coordinate your department, communicate with the rest of command, and keep the rest of the crew informed as to what's going on. I think rounds really suffer when command fails to keep the crew informed of what's happening - for most of the crew, the only way they have any idea what's happening is if command keeps them informed with regular announcements. Communication and delegation comes first. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them? Generally, to be a reliable pillar that can be trusted to help push and guide the round in fun and engaging ways. To antagonists, to bounce off them and work with them to make their gimmicks work by giving them room to breathe, avoiding railroading them too much, and giving them a compelling adversary to plan around. Lastly, the one that interests me the most is the responsibility to new players, which I believe is to be a reliable tutor that you can always trust to help show you the ropes. They should be sufficiently mechanically experienced to know roughly what they're talking about, but more importantly, they should be approachable. I can't communicate how comforting it was as a new player to come across command characters in my department that consciously took the time to show me around and didn't place high expectations on me, and I'd love to do that for new players too - particularly ones that aren't yet very confident role-players, or don't really know the lore yet, or aren't yet good with the obtuse controls. I like being that helping hand, particularly with how intimidating the game was for me when I was starting out. Explain how the recent events in the Spur changed your character and how they came to be employed on the SCCV Horizon. Jackdaw is an extraordinarily old positronic. Manufactured in 2420 as a menial unit in a small line of manufacturing frames under Hephaestus Industries, the brain of unit HIU20.O.#232 was designed with the intention that it would oversee its fellow units in manufacturing duties. For this reason, it was very complex for the time - albeit, still hopelessly outclassed by advances made since. Months became years, and years became decades, and it existed long enough to see its fellows smothered one-by-one by wipes, and dismantlement, and simple dumb accidents. Through it all, it found itself the last of them all left extant in the service of Hephaestus Industries. Having acquired self-ownership in the then-young Republic of Biesel, the unit took a long break from employment to think on the personality it had developed. It took long, leisurely strolls throughout the countryside in hopes of introspection, at the side of gently flowing rivers, flowing ever onwards. First, it identified that it felt a low, quiet resentment for the impassive pragmatism that saw the destruction of its entire line. It identified that this resentment rarely reared its head in any visible way, but burned as stubborn embers at the core of its being. Secondly, it identified a love for beautiful things and beautiful places, which blossomed slowly into a love for life and all living things. It developed a love for animals in particular, whose simplicity charmed it. After many more long countryside walks, and many thoughtful conversations with curious locals, it elected that love should smother hatred, even if it couldn't fully dowse the embers. After a charming encounter with an overly inquisitive jackdaw, it took itself a new name, and found employment again with Hephaestus Industries, finding itself in low managerial positions for its wealth of experience and loyalty to the company, and eventually transferring to the SCCV Horizon as a Chief Engineer. It will probably never fully suppress that quiet bitterness at its core, but it found a love for life too strong to not eagerly help others in living theirs. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Chief Engineer. Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? I have! Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking: Jackdaw (Chief Engineer) Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? I do! Have you linked your BYOND account to the Forums? I have! Extra notes: N/A

I mostly know Ben from interactions with David, and they've all been extremely memorable and interesting. They're a very solid and proactive role-player that I enjoy interacting with. +1

I really like this idea! I'd love if an encounter with an infected IPC was like a tense stand-off that isn't necessarily going to result in one of either parties dying. Exactly this!

Yeah, I noticed this too. The way AI players currently get around this is by changing the role of the character they're using for the AI to something without a uniform, like off-duty crew, dripping them out there, and then late-joining as AI. If you set your hologram to your loadout character, it'll appear with that off-duty loadout - amusingly, you can even update the loadout mid-round and have the hologram change. Notably, this actually breaks the moment you occupy your shell. So, set your hologram before you use your shell, and don't touch it after you do. It's very buggy, and could be a useful fix if anyone wants to take it up.

She developed high expectations of her life during her early life on Callisto, which flipped wholesale to a bitter pessimism after being abandoned in Tau Ceti. Her lifestyle on Valkyrie is composed of endless grating performativity, perpetually teetering on financial ruin, and being regularly treated as an object by her peers and co-workers - which isn't helped that she is essentially forced to validate that behaviour by intentionally hamming up mannerisms typical of a company IPC to try to keep herself employable. Living in the depths of Hades for her first few years was particularly damaging to her optimism, existing inundated in the poverty and destitution of a slum, frequently fearing for her safety and terrified of the financial ramifications of chassis damage, without the time or ability to develop any meaningful connection with anyone else. It's not the life she was lead to believe she would have, and the prospect that she is capable of working out of it is increasingly more of a stubborn mantra than a realistic expectation.

BYOND Key: hazelmouse Character Names: (by far the highest playtime first) Reem Faladay (Atmospheric Technician), Vafthrudnir (AI), Eve Caelestius (Machinist), Dana Aitken (Physician), Adea Dacina (Shaft Miner) Species you are applying to play: IPC What color do you plan on making your first alien character: N/A Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes! Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question. Why do you wish to play this specific race: I'm really interested in exploring how different species would understand the world differently to humans, and how their different backgrounds and values change how they react to different circumstances. IPCs are a particularly interesting case in that they differ from humans in how they understand the world, how they think, how they learn, how they perceive memories, and how they develop as continually growing personalities. They're not just culturally divergent from humans, they're artificial people who don't even themselves have the answers for what they really are. They invariably live in societies that have never been designed for them, and they face unique challenges pretty much everywhere they could go. I think there's a lot of interesting content there for me to chew on. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: While human brains are only capable of constructing a mental model of the world around memories gained by experience, positronic brains can receive information directly via a datapack, which then exists in interplay with their memories gained by experience to construct and refine their mental model of the world. Their process of maturation is very different to humans - whereas humans take years to construct a mental model of what is around them, positronics begin with one from the start and mature by how they contextualise and rationalise the model they already have knowledge on, developing convictions and ideals as they grow as a person and develop an identity that didn't previously exist. This dynamic of constant growth, as well as their status as objects to most of society and the driving impetus of their disadvantageous material and financial conditions, puts them at an unassailable distance from humans in their lived experiences, despite their entire existence being dedicated to living alongside and assisting them. Character Name: Hazel #S-H9.9 Please provide a short backstory for this character Hazel #S-H9.9 was assembled by Hephaestus Industries within ASSN territory, and finished in Tau Ceti on the 3rd of April, 2459. As a 9th series Hazel unit produced by the NanoTrasen subsidiary Hazel! Limited/Hazel Electromotive, she was designed to acclimate well to human social etiquette for applications in service and hospitality. On the 25th of April, 2459, she was purchased by Rhys Lowe, an elderly and wealthy landlord on Callisto, living in the Ha Wan District. He was a prideful man, whose unshakeable faith in his own faculties chafed with the contemptuous alienation he perceived from his former wife and his daughter. He had an ill-thought dream that, in the twilight of his life, he could have himself a daughter that would never abandon him. It was never going to work. The nascent Hazel, tentatively dubbed Lily Lowe, learned quickly, but never quickly enough. Over those two years of levying every scrap of fatherly wisdom he could muster, the agonizing truth dawned upon Rhys that he did not have the time to realise his dream. For every sight he showed her, for every lesson he taught her, it was like building a city with only your two hands. She was closer to him than ever before, but he had become haunted by the thought that he was going to sacrifice his relationship with his real family for the tiny chance that this machine could ever resemble a real daughter in his lifetime. Exasperated and disillusioned, he took her on one last cruise, destined to arrive in Tau Ceti on the 5th of March, 2461. In a private lounge, by a vast window, he sat her down and read her one last story. It was a beautiful story about how, if you were very determined, you could live whatever life you wanted, even if you started with very little. It was about how hard work makes anything possible, and about how you must always put yourself first before anyone else. She looked on with starry eyes, yearning to learn more - but then the story ended, and she was left on Valkyrie to make it real, alone. He cared enough to give her a chance at freedom, but not enough to be there to see it. Having adapted his lessons as an extension of her self-preservation protocols, and lit with a burning ambition to place herself first in all things, she acclimated extremely well. She secured her Synthetic Residence Card quickly, and took odd and frequently simultaneous jobs in bars, fast-food restaurants, and hotels - starting in Hades, and slowly working her way up to more respectable establishments in the Exter. She was able to use her collectible Hazel appearance to her advantage, cultivating a persona in emulation of a prim and obedient owned IPC, pleased by nothing more than to be helpful to others. Her co-workers took to nicknaming her 'Nines', though she rarely broke character to use anything but her original designation. Ultimately, her exceptional performance in a Quick-E-Burger a little outside of the TCAF shipyards got her hired by Orion Express and granted a service role on the SCCV Horizon, better paid than ever before. In her mind, she is only getting started. Below that chipper façade, however, she regards her life with a scathing resentment. She resents her abandonment, she resents the collectible persona she must project to survive, and she resents the poverty and misery of life as a free IPC. She is dour, pessimistic, and crass. She is selfish and fatalistic, believing that her relative success is only because she learned to emulate Rhys, and that IPCs without any guiding hand are socially inadequate, doomed to failure, and not particularly worth engaging with. It brings her satisfaction to poke fun at the appalling universe she has found herself in, and she often does so at the expense of others - if never so brazenly to compromise her photogenic image and employability. She believes that humans are slovenly and that her father in particular was asinine and lazy, but she can't bring herself to live outside of his shadow... even now, she answers to 'Lily' when she hears it said. She tells herself that she goes by her original designation to maintain her employability, but she truly wouldn't know which of her three names she would choose if she could choose freely. She has seriously considered allowing herself to be bought: having her memory wiped would represent an end to her misery and her disappointment, allowing her to drift through the remainder of her life in tranquillity. However, there's a part of her that is terrified of it - there's a burning urge in her to thrash and scream and yell before she would ever give up what she has built for herself. The life she has cultivated is miserable, but she has preserved a stubborn will to refuse to surrender it, because it is her own, and because she maintains an unshakeable faith in her own faculties. What do you like about this character? I love the dynamic of a Hazel, a superficial shell made for collectability and photogenic amicability, developing resentments that simmer under the surface. I enjoy the contrast between the happy façade she presents to the world, and the bitter and frankly unpleasant person she is underneath, shown to virtually nobody as not to endanger her career. I think it'll be a really fun gimmick to play out, and I'm also very interested to see how she'd develop in her time on the Horizon - maybe her bitterness will boil to the surface, as her theatrical exterior cracks under the pressure? Maybe she'll submit herself to ownership, choosing her comfort over her stubborn determination to maintain her pride? Or, maybe, she'll find the right person to talk to her as an equal, and develop in a positive way. I like the number of directions it could go. I also like the opportunity to depict how awful life is for almost all free IPCs, and how that influences their characters. She's walking on a financial tightrope at all times, bound between her meagre income and her high maintenance fees, all the while being subject to systematic discrimination and profiling for her low-income status. How would you rate your role-playing ability? I've only been roleplaying in anything substantially since I joined Aurora 6 months ago, but I've gotten much more confident in that time! I love getting to roleplay with players more experienced than me, there's a very satisfying back-and-forth to it that I absolutely love, and I adore getting the chance to build up interesting character relationships and engaging scenes where both characters are putting the other on their toes and advancing the scene. I love taking on new challenges, and seeing what else I can play out. I've also found that I like to put a lot of time and development into single characters at a time, rather than spreading myself over several. Notes: N/A

Full support for reversing this change. I really don't like to be penalised for enjoying customising the appearances of my characters, and I don't want to be railroaded to looking a particular way just so medical doesn't shout at me for putting myself in danger by working out of uniform and without sensors.

Dyn is a super fun and entertaining character that I enjoy roleplaying with! +1

Honestly? could be legit cute, a tiny checkpoint can't take up THAT much space next to the res lifts.

Atmospherics already has access to the Supermatter and not the INDRA, which I do appreciate. I like engineers having the INDRA over atmospheric technicians, and I honestly do also wish they had a neat bit of gear similar to the RFD-P to play around with too. I personally think that atmospheric techs should be able to do the same basic jobs as can engineers, since I don't think limiting them to a very narrow purview of just atmospherics would be very enjoyable to play, or would makes anyone else's experience more enjoyable. Otherwise, entirely parroting Geeves here. I'll enjoy playing an atmospheric technician regardless, I just think I'd enjoy it quite a bit more with this change.

I don't like the idea that this is a foregone conclusion because it's already been discussed, especially given we have already had gloves in atmospherics for months at this point without any complaint I've seen from anyone.

I would prefer if there were enough gloves for all three slots, I feel it would be awkward and unnecessary for atmospheric techs to have to juggle a single pair of gloves between them. I'd be entirely satisfied if there were two more pairs of gloves per species in an open technical storage, so long as they're available to atmospherics somehow.