Mr.Popper

I don't know who this Shaman is, but this suggestion definitely isn't a diss at you or any other medical/security player. You're just following the regulations that are there. I like when procedure is fought over for roleplay like in your example, the issue is the procedure is completely one-sided in medical/security's favor and there's nothing the Chaplain can do to exercise their own authority. I agree that Investigator should take precedence, and a time clause would alleviate my concern of them sitting on the body the whole round. It definitely doesn't help that the Chaplain has no way of checking in on either department to verify a body's status. Maybe giving the job access leading up to the morgue and forensic labs? They definitely shouldn't be able to go directly into where bodies are stored, just far enough to get an in-person status report. I know security access is stingy, but it's a single slot job and Chaplains arguably have a place in the brig anyway seeing as IRL inmates are usually entitled to clergy visits. Besides, I'm pretty sure there's a door blocking decks 2 and 3 of security anyway.

It's lame trying to do a funeral, one of the only actual duties the Chaplain has, and being stonewalled with "That's not in the postmortem (there's none written)" or "They're being investigated (sec put it in a box and forgot about it)". I looked at the standard operating procedure, wondering if this culture is even allowed, and realized there's actually no mention of Chaplains at all. So here's an abridged version of what I think should be added to the Postmortem Wishes section: Harmless and gives the Chaplain more stuff to do. If it somehow bothers the deceased player, well, they can write postmortem instructions forbidding it.

Thank you very much for tackling this. Here are some suggestions I can think of off the top of my head: Shorten "Shipboard Systems Engineer" to "Systems Engineer". Systems engineering is a real field apparently and it sounds cleaner. More atmos tech variety, what Kermit said + maybe something like "emergency fire technician" for those leaning into emergency response. Definitely should be an electrical-focused engineer title like "electrician". As for which to replace, I'd say either Maint Tech or combine Reactor and Maint Tech into one job called "technician". The reactors are theoretically important even if they're static almost every round, while Maint Tech would probably just be the job for playing with maint panels. I personally think the devs should go crazy with adding as many alt titles as they like, but if that's too "bloat" the basic engineer/technician divide Kermit mentioned is the next best thing, minimizing what's actually in the game while giving players the tools to self-flavor however they like. It would be VERY cool if you could pick both your discipline and engineer/technician to mix and match (ie. electrical engineer, electrical technician, life support engineer, life support technician, etc.) but that's a lot more work.

Fyni does character voice really well from what I've seen, to the point that I was surprised to learn some of her characters are even played by the same person. In general she goes above and beyond for the roleplay, most apparent in her becoming one of the few storyteller mains keeping the odyssey gamemode going, and I'm sure that devotion will translate to playing Tajara. Mirrouen's backstory already shows a good understanding of the lore and I look forward to seeing her in the warehouse.

FearTheBlackout, also known as simplemaroon, also known as fearthegabby, also known as I'm gay. Straight. UP!, or just Gabby, has managed to become one of the main representatives of Dionae lore in my mind. I'm not especially familiar with the species myself, yet her Dionae I'm most familiar with, Winding roads ventured with Ozeuoi's blessings under the hot Moghesian sun, served as a great introduction for their form of Dionae and represents both Diona and Unathite lore well, proving she can represent the species to outsiders like myself. Moreover, she excels at worldbuilding with out-of-game tools like the relay, where you can find countless decrees from her Trinary Perfection Priestess Bristol-III bridging lore developments to the ship as well as spinning her own. This is the exact kind of writing that would translate well to articles, and Dionae would really benefit from the added visibility.

Lore Impact: Medium Species: Synth Short Description: Have you ever wanted to own a shell but felt wrong about it, or needed an industrial but it's too expensive? Meet Jack! You'll never mistake him for a human with his retro-themed polymer skin, and his actuators could give a G2 a run for its money. Every Jack is made with tender love and care, in fact no two are exactly identical! Here at Jackhammer Hardware Solutions, the environment is our number one customer, which is why all our positronics are made with at least 62% recycled materials. Even the positronic brains are ethically sourced from reclaimed units—which only the best Jackhammer technicians extensively erase to prevent anomalies. If you find your Jack repeating names of people you don't know, refusing to work, or speaking foreign languages, please call 313-755-JACK and we'll schedule a maintenance checkup right away! Why not build a better future? Buy your own Jack today! OOC, Jack fills the classic sci-fi trope of the mass produced uncanny android, albeit with a few Aurora unique twists. Their outdated appearances and deviant behavior are explained extensively in universe as products of corporate mismanagement, and complications from their recycled origins can be used to expedite character development for those wanting to play more personality. My goal with Jack is twofold: fill the niche of the creepy swarm of uncanny valley robots, which only an IPC brand can accomplish, and develop Orion Express' bare robotics division. How will this be reflected on-station?: A whole new IPC brand for players to explore. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yes. There's another shell brand, Hazel, but this is a very different execution. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Of course! I've tried to provide a complete picture with info for blurbs on both the IPC and Orion Express pages, but I realize a lot of it will inevitably be edited out or reworked. If anything I hope synth lore will be interested in some of the hooks I dropped and take them in their own direction. Long Description: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k7ToV5Hw2lID6cobEz8Wd3htVBHWy3soEKFdSayHX6E/edit?usp=sharing

I also wish emotes like *laugh and *scream were audible like other servers. I guess the argument against them is RPers don't want their characters voiced? But it's better than nothing imo, and if you don't like it you can just manually write the emote. Also Unathi and Skrell already have vocal emotes so it wouldn't be that much of a leap.

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I'm against increased slots for this exact reason. No other department has this problem, so really it'd just be raising the amount of sec and med characters, emphasizing their gameplay loops even more than they already are. Just look at planetary events where sec typically make up like half the manifest. It sucks not getting your roll, especially if you only have one character, but I think encouraging players to branch out to underplayed jobs is an overall positive. If Aurora's pop reaches the state of every department being regularly filled during Odyssey I would support this, though even then it should probably depend on the amount of actors/server pop.

I was going to go question by question and explain why I voted X/Y, but realized that would take too long. Here are the highlights instead: Firstly, is Aurora stagnating? I believe I voted no, although I have mixed feelings. I think the gameplay is stagnant and voted as such; the only gameplay loop that seems consistently supported is the command-security-medical trinary, reflected by those departments being disproportionately populated. And based off the survey most people agree with me, at least in the broad strokes. Lore changes won't fix this and radically reinventing Aurora's universe would just be more bells and whistles that aren't really needed. My problems aren't with the current cast of characters, setting, or lore. Aurora already has an amazing community of roleplayers and high quality lore writing to support them. As far as tackling this issue goes, there would be advantages to switching setting, or at least the map. Ignoring Horizon's mapping shortcomings, there are many great suggestions for how a new map could improve gameplay, just look at QuestioningMark's excellent suggestion to make the ship a hub for offships, or some of the ideas sprinkled throughout the survey like resource scarcity. While I'm not vehemently opposed to an independent setting—I voted a middle number like 3 iirc—I think it's missing the root of the problem, that being gameplay. It's a trap that promises "character freedom" (while likely discouraging the different corporate factions, prim and proper characters like primaries, and any other origin tailored to Horizon—essentially the opposite extreme of the current standard) and "freedom of movement" (while stripping the main characters of their powerful benefactor that allows them to go nearly anywhere) at the expense of throwing out countless corporate uniform sprites, axing corporate roleplay, and severing any continuity to SCCV Horizon or NSS Aurora. Again, it can work and I would be interested to see that version of Aurora, but I think it would be an unfortunately shortsighted choice. I also don't want to say "never" because a lot of my concerns could be addressed depending on how it's implemented—a mix between independent and corporate characters would be a good compromise, for example. But IMO most benefits of the independent setting could be achieved by simply switching to a lower profile megacorp ship. Similarly, I don't think a time skip would really fix anything. Like Cat and some others I was initially open to it, but the more I thought the more I grew opposed. At least with switching to a non-SCC faction you can potentially justify keeping your characters around, and I'm sure the staff would facilitate such justification like they did with the Aurora to Horizon change (for all the claims that the two share no common characters they were bridged together with an IC crew transfer). But to skip several years at the same time is essentially killing off most characters—there are some, mostly younger ones that could be developed through a time skip—unless players decide to massively retcon their character's history and motivation at the expense of everyone else's immersion; imagine John Sol, age 50 after the time skip, interacting with Jane Biesel, age 30, when before the time skip they were both 30. It would feel borderline LRP. Character turnover is already a massive issue in Aurora and saying "it'll be in 3 years you can wrap your characters up before then" pretends as if no more characters will be made in the coming 3 years and no new players will join. Imagine a new player putting all their effort into a character in 2027/2028 only to be told "oh yeah there's a time skip and they work somewhere completely different now". I just wouldn't play until that soft reboot. Aurora is not a tabletop game between 5 friends, it's a huge public roleplay with a fluctuating player base, each person with different goals and plans for their characters. And relishing in making everyone drop the characters they've invested time, effort, and sometimes real money into has the same energy as rooting for mass characters death events; it's just weird and counterintuitive to long term play. Some miscellaneous stuff: I voted science in the department vote, although I would be just as enthusiastic about it being replaced by an exploration team so long as there's still room to flavor yourself as a biologist, botanist, archaeologist, etc. Bay seems to have had success with a focus on exploration and I think it would be further enhanced by a shift in focus to offship/expedition activities as in Mark's suggestion, not to mention fitting with Odyssey. I'm weary of "democratizing" weaponry, as vague as the question is. While I think security is too often the focus of rounds, that doesn't mean I want to pick up an AK-47 and start smoking greimorians as a janitor; I want more solutions to problems that are diplomatic, creative, scientific. Some people have suggested making improvised weapons more viable and I think that'd be a good change, though I still would like that to be a last resort. Matt(?) I believe also rightly pointed out that guns need to be limited in accessibility for conflict to occur, otherwise Aurora turns into an action server. The perfect NBT2, to me at least, would be Deep Space 9 meets Ridley Scott's Alien. Everyone is congregated on a ship serving as a hub, with friendly/neutral offships becoming normal jobs like merchant similar to how Bay does it. Crewmembers can go out on adventurers aboard the mining ship, volunteer for the exploration team, or offer their services to one of the independent ships between hauls. All the while you're ruled by probably insane suits, themselves controlled by faceless corporations with competing interests. This would keep Aurora's megacorporate, dysfunctional tone (the 1st most voted option) while compromising by permitting more recurring independent characters (2nd most voted option), and also throw more factions against each other for that juicy conflict. TL;DR: Based off the survey most players are unhappy with gameplay rather than the lore, megacorporate setting, or character freedom (which is tied to the setting). Therefore, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and killing off the majority of Horizon characters in the process, I think the new setting should focus on facilitating gameplay loops (exploration, offship interaction) and downgrade the crew to a less important, more diverse corporate ship with a strong independent presence as a compromise. Regardless of what direction the staff go, I'm sure they'll cook something special and I hope I get to see it. These are just my thoughts as an Auroroid mostly content with the current high quality output. 💕💕

I like the setting of Horizon, but the mapping leaves a lot to be desired. This is a thread for compiling suggestions towards a hypothetical remap. Keep in mind I'm not a mapper or dev and I don't expect anyone to do all this; this is just to gather feedback for anyone doing so in the future. These are my main points: More verticality. Right now the crew is overwhelmingly congregated in deck 2 with a few attractions on deck 3. There's nothing wrong with keeping the pop concentrated (except when the pop's TOO high) but the wide approach makes Horizon feel small. There's also certain locations that feel haphazardly tacked onto deck 3 like the smoking lounge. I'll go on to propose a 4th deck in this suggestion but I understand not wanting to bloat the map. In that case, just roll my deck 3 suggestions in with the bridge. Following up on the last, try to give every department a reason to be on each deck. I don't want different departments to NEVER interact nor should one deck contain everything of importance. An easy way to do this is to make sure every department has at least 2 floors (which the current map has). Kill the central ring. The stargazer's great but the central ring, especially the gaps between decks, make it feel like a building or station. Make things DIRTY. Most of the Horizon is Star Trek levels of clean. I'd much prefer a grittier vibe like Alien's Nostromo, but to be fair part of that is spriting and aesthetics. Maybe arrange Horizon into layers of maintenance, with the lower decks where the grunts work being poorly maintained in stark contrast to the polished public areas. Darker, spookier maintenance tunnels. The current tunnels are remarkably well lit and feel more cozy than haunting. More mini-lifts, public ladder shafts, less stairs. Engineering in particular needs a lift to transport heavy equipment between decks. Why does my spaceship have stairs everywhere? Public facilities that aren't the holodeck. Either move the thrusters up a deck or spread them out across decks; it's really cool hearing the engines boom in flight but currently you have to be in a very specific part of deck 1 only janitors and engineers go to. Bigger hydroponics and a dedicated cryogenics array. I know these things don't see much use, but they add a lot of credibility to the deep space vibe. More signs/posters with corporate ads on them. Cut the diagonal walls. They're janky, see-through, can't be replaced, and not even particularly immersive; if anything seeing the actual wings makes Horizon feel much smaller than it should be. More escape pods. Ideally there should be some on every deck, save maybe the bridge. Here's one possible layout to give an idea of what I'd like to see, from bottom to top: Flight Deck. Horizon's crucial but ugly underbelly. Landing pads dimly lit by red torches make up much of the deck, with the hectic supply office tacked onto the adjacent corridor as an afterthought. Closest to the main lift is the engineering office, with Horizon's reactor(s) waiting beyond it. Operations and Engineering are headquartered here, sharing a dingy breakroom. Xenoarchaeology also has a laboratory next to SCCV Quark's hangar. Operations. Horizon's lifeblood. Hydroponics, cryogenics, and the ever secretive research labs fill this deck, all protected by the security office. The second floor of the operations department is here, represented by the dingy workshop. Atmospherics and propulsion can also be found in the depths of maintenance. Beside cryogenics is the morgue and medical lift, allowing for critical patients to be quickly frozen. For emergencies, the AI core and bunker hide within twisting corridors, blocked off by blast doors only accessible by command. Security and Research are headquartered here, sharing a firing range. The Promenade. Horizon's downtown. The public and merchant docks are found here, neatly funneling visitors into the library, dining area, bar, and other attractions. For emergencies, the medical department is in a central location accessible to both crew and visitors. Crew can find even more facilities such as the amphitheater and gymnasium tucked deeper into the deck, somewhat private from the docks. Telecommunications and the shield generator are secure behind a bright yellow sign no one would dare cross. Liaison, Consular, and Investigator offices are also open to the public. Medical and Service are headquartered here. The Bridge. Preferably the deck with the bridge should be reduced in size, with just enough room for the bridge itself. Command are literally above the rest of the ship but unable to stay here all round; it only holds the bare necessities. Think of a Star Trek bridge where it's essentially one room connected by an elevator, although it could retain the public bridge atrium we have now. Command is headquartered here. Just to reiterate, the goal with a layout like this is to give everyone a reason to be on every deck. Certain choices may appear inconvenient from a meta standpoint (separating the bridge and the bunker by 2 decks, splitting security and medical, putting the supply office at the very bottom) but their intent is to encourage movement and potentially conflict; command would have to be much more tactical moving to the CIC if it's further away, for example. What do you think? What would you add or remove from the current Horizon? What does your ideal layout look like?