Mr.Popper

Arrow makes a good point that XO being de facto captain most rounds would be redundant, and I can imagine that was the main consideration for limiting the role like this. However, it's still an underwhelming implementation as others have pointed out and discards the main advantage of a second in command; quick and easy succession instead of committee discussion during an emergency. The solution as I see it is rather than making XO de facto captain in the absence of one, ie. most rounds, they only assume command in crisises where an acting captain would have been elected under current regs. This accomplishes the main goal of simplifying the chain of command while also preventing role redundancy, as unlike the captain the XO's authority would only extend past the bridge during emergencies. Note that they should still be in charge of the bridge- in the event Horizon encounters another ship, there needs to be a designated guy in charge of that and XO is the ideal pick given their control over passengers and the service they receive. TL;DR: XO should automatically become acting captain in emergencies, but in normal circumstances without a captain they should only have authority over the bridge and service. Also, unrelated but I strongly believe XO should retain their current duties leading service and managing personnel. It's a valuable position for rp and makes the XO a lifeline between the general populace and an ivory tower captain.

Fair enough. I don't know much of anything about the developer process and I'm sorry if it came off like I was telling them how to do their job, I have no clue what coding/mapping is like nor how labor for stuff like story arcs is divided. There are several suggestions already out there that offer great improvements for the server's core gameplay loops which I hope are considered before anything to do with the cargo shuttle, but at the end of the day it's at the discretion of the devs and that's fine. I don't exactly consider Horizon to be a Mary Sue ship. On paper (or the wiki) it has reasonable constraints compared to other ships in the Spur, and as you pointed out the more outlandish capabilities are easy to write off as situational or experimental. The Mary Sue vibes mostly come from mechanics and non-canon events outside of the lore team's control: being the most powerful ship in any given sector (only because none of the ghost roles fly large warships), the engineering department buffing the ship well above its canonical specifications, the JPMorgan and McDonalds crew repelling "elite" soldiers with ease, etc. None of this is indicative of the ship's actual abilities but constantly seeing it round to round inevitably leads to misconceptions, conscious or not. Therefore I think it would be better to err on the side of caution when adding to the list of what Horizon can do. Writing throwaway specs like "the ship has a giant automated storage area no one can see and that's where we get everything we need" will only legitimize this misconception and needlessly stretch suspension of disbelief. Of course, mechanically we're talking about two very different things, I just dislike making significant parts of Horizon offscreen. Residential is an exception because it's our OOC headspace and would contribute nothing by being playable. But the ship's storage? Why would we want to move that off of the occupational deck, rendering actual in-game locations like the warehouse and technical storage secondary to an imaginary area? Mechanically the warehouse is really just where random junk gets sorted, but its lore purpose is to be the ship's primary storage area and that would be lost in this change. I agree with you that it's a problem I just disagree on how to fix it. Since I've already wasted a lot of time critiquing other people's solutions I'll be constructive with my own: What if the cargo shuttle was replaced by an experimental industrial-size teleport pad? It's in line with Horizon's scientific duties in testing new technology, and while I'm not 100% on how teleportation works in-game vs in-lore I think most people would accept some technobabble about quantum entanglement and Bluespace. Give it some strict limitations like not being able to transport lifeforms and having an uplink with only one location (presumably an outpost somewhere) and you've replaced both of the shuttle's roles while adding some interesting sciencey flavor. This isn't a perfect idea by any means and I don't know how the lore team would feel about the technological implications, but I'm just spitballing. There's a fix out there without any of these shortcomings, we just need to be creative.

I realize I'm late to the party and I'm not a cargo player but I'll dump my 2 cents. There are some good points made for this suggestion, even if I think the negative baggage associated with it isn't worth it, so let's start there. With its (de jure) role as a deep space vessel, it makes sense for Horizon to have stockpiles of goods to stay operational. The cargo shuttle may make sense in times like Synthetic Nightmares where the ship is a hop and a skip away from a neighboring corporate base to make/take deliveries, but it's unfeasible in the long run if the ship is to ever move into truly alien territory. With that being said... when is Horizon going to be in "deep space"? It certainly isn't right now while the ship is flying around running errands in colonized space, and it won't be in the near future with the unfinished storyline of Nightmares and the (presumed) downtime right after. That fact alone makes this issue extremely low priority and it should instead be dealt with when it becomes relevant. I think developers should focus on more pressing matters like the ongoing story arc and the lacking content in certain everyday mechanics (research department). As for the theoretical issue of the cargo shuttle having to operate at ludicrous range and speed, because there is a lore issue there, I don't think writing it off as an elevator to a storage area is the way to go. Besides the issues others have already pointed out, namely the stakes-shattering situation of Horizon being deprived of critical resources because it can't access its own warehouse, I am not a fan of any lore revisions that make Horizon as a ship anymore cracked than it already is. You may have heard the term "Mary Sue ship" thrown around before, used to describe space ships in sci-fi that are ridiculously powerful and capable of doing anything with no drawbacks. I believe Horizon is dangerously close to falling under this label and changes like this only close that gap. Why does Horizon need a gigantic storage level, presumably staffed exclusively by Amazon warehouse robots, when there is already a warehouse on the in-game work deck for that explicit purpose? Neither situation is perfect, but ultimately I prefer the compromise of an abnormally fast shuttle over adding more unnecessary and unseen space to bloat Horizon's size and damage its believability.

This is certainly an annoying occurrence but hard coding languages to origins would either be too restrictive or unfair. In the case of origin language(s) occupying slots, many origins would be mechanically unable to pick any other languages (ie. Coletters, Eridani suits, and Europans would automatically know Common and Tradeband, filling both slots). These are in theory the languages those origins should know, but I would rather players have some choice for unusual cases rather than none at all. On the other hand, if they do not occupy a slot, any origin other than Biesellite would have disproportionately more language options, creating a weird meta around certain origins. Normally I value roleplay over gameplay but this is such a mechanical disparity that Biesellites would have to be able to pick more languages to make it fair- and at that point, why have multiple languages for a species if any character can nearly speak them all? But informing people of what languages their character's planet uses in-game can and should be done. Maybe when you pick an origin it automatically sets your languages to suggested ones with text on the side explaining how it's used on your character's homeworld, with the option to remove any as you see fit. Or if that's too difficult, add some fancy colored text to each origin's description listing the common languages.

You are right that borgs and AI should not be masquerading as normal characters- that defeats the point of IPCs- and people should absolutely not be playing them that way. However, they are still characters in the sense that someone is playing them and they are playing a role, albeit a programmed one. Ideally, a station-bound should be limited to at most a two-dimensional persona as dictated by its programming, with no room for actual character development or activity outside of its designated role. Anyone who oversteps this clear limitation should be appropriately punished by staff or job banned if necessary, the job itself should not be neutered unreasonably because of a few bad apples. Up until this point I have played under the assumption that cyborgs (and robots and androids) are common synthetic constructs bought and sold like any other commodity for corporate or private use, with those on Horizon only being distinguished by their laws and SCC vetted programming. This appears to be supported by the wiki, but if I am wrong and the official stance is the opposite please let me know so I can adjust my synthetic characters accordingly. Otherwise, I agree that canonically cyborgs should not be able to speak in every accent available under the mimic accent verb but this is something players can self-regulate. This is true for many things mechanically possible in HRP, players are given the benefit of the doubt to self-regulate and punished if they go out of line. I assume the verb exists so that a newly spawned cyborg can set their voice at their convenience rather than accidentally getting stuck with the wrong one when they spawn in- cyborgs have a verb to change their name for presumably the same reason. If you really want to stop cyborg players from abusing this it could be a one-time option, but this is superfluous when those offenders can be handled individually. I agree actually. I only mentioned this briefly but several of the accents listed in the original post would be strange or inappropriate for a corporate synthetic to use, but were mentioned nonetheless because I am not an expert on the lore and would rather leave it at staff discretion which of the missing accents should be added. I probably should have clarified this originally but I will say it here instead- I do not think synthetics should be able to use whatever accent tag in the game they want, but they should have a reasonable selection of options that comply with lore.

IPCs also are not manufactured as "people", they are effectively cyborgs with more autonomy. The reason IPCs have unique accents or appearances in the first place is so they can appear more relatable and human to organics. This is why text-to-speech exists in the first place and why it has gradually become more lifelike, both IRL and presumably in the Aurora universe. Really, any synthetic speech is a form of text-to-speech just with more set dressing to be appealing to organics. Therefor it makes perfect sense that the SCC and other companies would dress their synthetic units with more realistic voices, especially those expected to interact with humans like medical, service, clerical borgs, or the AI itself. Why would an intelligent corporation ever want their products to be less appealing? If the developers needed to limit accent selection for OOC reasons like bloat, I think it would be fair to narrow it down to TTS + all of the Biesellite accents (including Antilles and Mictlan preferably), but this is not the case as far as I can tell. Removing selection now would only be detrimental to players for no good lore reason as outlined in the rest of this post.

I believe this is an oversight rather than an intended feature, but AI is missing several human accents in the "mimic accent" verb, and this is likely true for cyborgs as well (I will test and edit this post at some point to confirm). Additionally, the Eridani suit option is listed twice in the UI (the second as "Eridanian (2)". The missing accents are as follows: Native Silversun Gadpathurian Reinstated Eridanian Dreg Vulgar Morozi* Fisanduhian Novi Jadranic* Native Orepitter Providence Trinarist Galatean Tsukuyomian Valkyrian High Morozi* Europan Assunzionii San Colettish Port Antillean Mictlani Scarabs Eridanian, Dreg* Vysokan Non-Coalition Frontier Imperial Frontier* Empyrean Svarogite Bursa *Accents which could be argued to be improper for AI/cyborg, but which have been included in this list for the sake of accuracy.

This would be a great compromise of making the IPCs a present force on the map without them being overbearing. The way I see it the issue with the IPC NPCs is not that they exist- it makes the arc more relevant and I would not want them to be locked away in a dungeon where they act even more like video game enemies- the issue is their simple mob behavior is incongruent with RP. It works fine with aggressive animals because there is little RP to be had with them, but a theoretically sentient mob should be way more nuanced. Basically, either give them the space bear AI as suggested above or create custom behavior where they are still aggressive but do not immediately bolt for players. Instead they could hover around passively until aggroed (maybe when someone comes near or runs around making a lot of noise). It would provide far more opportunity for tense RP without completely invalidating the threat they pose.

BYOND key: Mr.Popper Discord name/id: mr.popper Borg / AI names: TEA, Mopotov / CaRLOS (Collaborative and Reliably Lucrative Operating System) Have you read the Aurora wiki page about the AI?: Yes. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: Put simply, I enjoy playing Borg and would like to try my hand at its big brother, the AI. But to elaborate, I will explain the roleplay appeal followed by the mechanical appeal. My Borg characters have been very one-note with their gimmicks, and while they are fun to play I would like to expand my palette to a similarly robotic, but more versatile role. For this same reason, I would eventually like to apply for the IPC whitelist, but IPCs are the most complex AI characters and I would like to dip my toes in the water first, so to speak. But AI is a roleplay goal in its own right as it provides a unique experience. I will try not to go into too much detail here, but I love the idea of developing a blank-slate AI based on how it is treated. My AI could develop into a benevolent parental figure, or perhaps into an even colder corporate crony- it all depends on the inputs provided by the crew. And this is all while having to juggle several binding programming laws. There is a lot of potential to breathe life into an otherwise uninteresting NPC and I hope I can explore it. AI is even more unique when you look at it from a gameplay standpoint. I struggle sometimes with normal jobs- especially Borg- to find things to do, so I actually find the premise of a constant stream of queries and requests to fulfill quite refreshing, even if it may be stressful at times. And even in downtime, you can pass the time by spectating nearly anyone on the ship. Not only is it usually interesting, but watching others roleplay is also a good learning experience as it offers a window to appreciate others' writing styles and character quirks. Aside from all of that, being able to play AI would greatly diversify my job selection and counter burnout from playing the same few characters. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they?: No. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action?: Of course. A whitelist is a privilege, and it is up to server staff to decide who is fit to participate in their server. I hope that I prove capable if given this privilege, but were I to misuse it, it would be only right for them to retract it. More than any other whitelist, the AI has massive implications for everyone in the round and its players need to be vetted.

I am not sure if this was intentional or a bug but could the beaches be lit up better? As they are now most of the sea is pitch black, which I assume is unrelated to the time of day because the rest of the map is in complete daylight(?)

I like the spirit of this as an RP mechanic (for the longest time I would carefully avoid covering any windows with flags before eventually succumbing and doing it anyway) although part of me thinks it would be weird for a cotton flag to have the same impact on visibility as a solid wall. Ideally flags would only partially affect visibility but I don't know if that could be properly represented with SS13 sight mechanics. In any case, it's a cool enough catalyst for RP to look past that and I consider anything that binds gameplay closer to RP to be a net positive.