FabianK3

IC statement MSG-CRC: 9e126da28250bdb37077145c0c2b4ac13fb233a4 AUTH-ID: Bradley Knight AUTH-STATE: VERIFIED TIMESTAMP: 15704690275 FROM: Bradley Knight, Atmospheric technician (Heph) TO: Visolela Kuvanga, Chief engineer (SCC) TITLE: RE: Status of propulsion and C-Goliath Drive ----- As per your request, we had another look on the status quo of our current means of propulsion. We used up a pretty big charge with the manual bluespace jump tonight, we are currently capable of three further jumps before we lack the moderator composition to execute any other meaningful jump. Propulsion on the other hand looks good: Phoron supplies are good enough to give us a continuous burn for the next weeks. Ilina, Roebuck and myself went through non-scheduluded maintenance after this mess to keep the thrusters operating at a higher efficiency while we set off away from the hostile cruiser. From the speed we have observed of the cruiser, we should be able to keep it at arms length as long as we don't take any larger breaks anywhere. We are faster, but only marginally in this regard. Concerning your question about next jump availability: We prepared a second charge for the drive that we didn't use up yet this night, meaning we can execute another jump in less then an hour of notice. I would suggest we do. If we set course to CES 146 utilizing a jump, we might get lucky enough for the cruiser to lose partial track - Maybe they are incompetent enough to take a wrong turn, giving us more time. When we made some distance, we also have the time to checkout CES 146, CES 142 and Vela in that direction. Let's look if there is a way out of this infested region in the galactic north. Frustrating thought to be running away from pirates, years ago they would've been the ones running. Where is the SAF when you need them. Let me or the team know if you require any other details from Atmos, Bradley Knight OOC plan Bluespace jump to CES 146, investigate system → burn to CES 142, investigate system → burn to Vela, investigate system → Re-evaluate situation, hope for region exit in the galactic north / utilize remaining resources to evade and move. Edit: Grammer

The moment we face some special conditions for "for this area" / "in this instance" persistence shouldn't be applied, we need to find a generic solution. The issue is for example with filing cabinets, how can a player see that "this" specific filing cabinet is not included in persistence and why is it not included? The moment we come up with arbitrary rules for excluding persistence on some things, things might become obfuscated/confusing quickly. (This is a general problem and not directly derived from the filing cabinet idea.)

and his trusted A last visit in engineering before the shift ends... Oh no! (Oh yeah)

I don't even have context to this myself.

Not quite! But I noticed as well. The PRs should be stay as small as possible to prevent scope creep. Somebody just needs to map in more of them but i think the last discourse in mapping was: Let's wait for the notice board refactoring.

Might be small, but when you also add refillable paper trays, wrapping paper and so on, it suddenly becomes whole new task

Persistent trash - Work in progress https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/21217 Refactoring of notice boards and implementation of command notice boards - Work in progress - Thanks to @KingOfThePing https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/21211

That is already possible AFAIK. Don't know about the money part though.

While I think that persistent money is a very cool thought and certainly features a lot of cool mechanics, I think it's currently a little out of reach. Things that would get focus at the moment: - (lockable) Noticeboards - Dirt - Trash - Vendors Those are probably the most feasible things for the near future in terms of implementing them.

One does mean the other isn't possible. When lockable boards are here, it's a question of mapping.

That's a great idea and already something @Fyni has brought to my attention. Lockable noticeboards, like, glass pane covered boards to present notes to the public. It's one of the next things on my bucket list.

I think the issue with any antag interaction is that is mechanically nearly impossible to catch. Many interactions of that kind are purely RP (Gun at your back in front of your local ATM) and have zero indication mechanically that this is an antag interaction — You could be robbed in an extended round as well, well, technically at least. With mechanically checking if the interaction is antag related out the window, the only feasible approach to that issue I have at the moment is to simply pause the persistence system for some persistent types (money for example, papers on notice boards don't need to be paused) for any round that is not extended (or not canon odyssey). Checking the round type could also be used for persistent dirt: Canon round? Save blood and dirt. Non-canon round? Convert blood into regular dirt. I think generally, the implementation of new persistent things is easier then getting right how they are persistent and how to handle the many edge cases that come along for the different persistent types.

You're not wrong. I'm expecting papers to not hit that 30-day limit often, I assume they get cleared before (at least in the future). The primary goal of the expiration system behind it is not to directly force removal of things because they are old, but rather to guarantee there is no unlimited stash of things that might be missed and cause troubles. It's more a technical cleanup then I'm expecting it to be a cleanup ingame. While not necessary for papers it will become necessary for other persistent types in the future.

The persistence system is here, allowing papers to be added to notice boards and keep them across rounds! First round of persistence, Darvan Omega:

When it comes to gameplay altering changes like vendor stocking or similar, I'm pretty sure things would require test merges. I don't think those things can be balanced properly without a test-merge. Unrelated to the persistence or where it happens.

The great things is: Objects can decide "themselves" when they get persistent. For example, at some point and object (or who ever handles the object) needs to decide when it becomes persistent. In the case of papers on boards, the board makes the paper persistent when it gets added. When it comes to dirt or other scenarios, you can add custom logic to prevent making things persistent in the first place.

Correct! The persistence subsystem features a way to add a ckey to a persistent saved data entry. There are some caveats to that at the moment: - When papers are added to a notice board, the user adding the paper will be marked by ckey. - Moderation is currently only possible by looking into the database. There is no admin tool for that just yet. - Depending on the type of persistence (in this case paper) staff should keep in mind, that a user adding a paper might not be the actual author of the contents. @Arrow768 is already playing around with that. Gibs, blood and antag rounds are something that still need some work as those are special cases.

Hi! The first step for across-round persistence has been implemented and has been merged: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/21055 What exactly is "persistence"? Persistence is the term used for anything that will be persistent between different game rounds. We no longer only have stories to share between rounds but starting to see the results of your fellow crewmen in the next shift as well. What does the first implementation contain exactly? The newly added subsystem is the heart of the new persistence subsystem and handles things like loading and saving of persistent things. With the core implementation, papers and noticeboards have been added as the first initial test of across-round persistence. From now on, papers you add to notice boards will stay persistent until somebody removes them or they become older then thirty days. When you remove a paper and re-pin it to the board, it will stay persistent, but the 30-day-timer doesn't get reset. When you remove a paper, edit it, re-pin it — or pin-it to a different board, the 30-day-timer resets. Why is there a lifespan for persistent things? Simply: To prevent trashing the ship with different things. Future things don't have to use the 30-day limit. Depending on the type it can be shorter, or longer. What is planned to be made persistent next? This is the questions this thread was primarily made for. Currently, persistent dirt is probably the next thing coming up and already in progress. Details on that are still to be discussed, but I am mentioning it now to prevent people from doing work twice, as some people already started to think about it! Get used to cleaning up your paperwork and stop littering... For any coders, here is some documentation I wrote to make things more accessible: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/wiki/Persistence Share your thoughts about the first implementation and what you think would go well in terms of new stuff to be made persistent. Big thanks to @Arrow768 and @MattAtlas for helping me with the implementation of the persistence subsystem. Edit history: - Big thanks.

It's great to see the engineering department get attention for RP sake! I think the suggestions made for the engineering alt titles are great so far, I don't have anything [left] to suggest for those. When it comes to the alt titles for atmos techs I'd love to see the following after a lot of thinking about them: - "Environmental systems engineer" Primary alternative to the generic atmospheric technician - "Propulsion engineer" I don't think we should consider the B-S-D at all. It's too new and bluespace is too magical to give it any consideration for an alt job title. - "Damage control technician" I'm not a friend of "fire [control] technician" at all - I think handling fires is too specific to be a dedicated position and "fire control" as a term that is too close to handling weapons systems seen in the realm of air and sea IRL, AFAIK. Damage control is better in my opinion as dealing with fire is a form of damage control - Considering ATs have been more or less seen as engineering's first responders, I think "Damage control" is much more suitable. ATs simply fit the role of "DCs" way too well to not take it IMO. ------- This isn't something related to the proposed changes in this PR, but it's something that has bothered me as AT main here and there: Engineer vs technician (Title form, not engineer vs [atmos] tech). Considering the required qualifications for engineers and atmos techs are currently the same (they should stay the same!), it's a bit difficult to take "technicians generally have lower education then engineers in terms of their title" as a good basis. You can either simply ignore the fact that engineers and technicians (per title, not ENG vs AT) have different education levels, adjust hiring qualifications for engineers/technicians into two sets (again, title, not currently available roles ingame) or you split the positions into engineers and technicians to give a base education level for each role respectively without changing base hiring requirements (similar as @kermit suggested). I don't think this topic is solvable with alt titles and I don't think we should tackle it with this PR, but as it has been mentioned before, I thought I'd share my take on it. (I am personally suffering from the issue that the education my main char has doesn't fit the role of what I'd love to play [damage control technician] when you say technicians have lower education then engineers, but what can you do... Is not utilizing your education and a possibly a higher paying position (RP-wise) reasonable to do what you love? woe.......... 😕) ------- Edit: Wording/Grammar/Format

I sadly don't have any experience with their characters yet, but just recently I was part of a round they played an antag in that gave quite some positive content. Based of the mentioned round I can only agree. Gimmick and escalation levels are something they do have in mind and I do think that will reflect positively to the command role(s) facing the gimmicks of other antags, especially as HoS. I think their responses meet the common expectations and I'm interested to see Skalnac during a trial.

Hi! I'm playing Bradley Knight, the atmos tech you have referred to. I hope i can shed some light on the round, provide some new perspective and hopefully help clear some things up for you. I joined mid-round as far as I can remember and just arrived after the antag presented themselves. Not long after the antag made it clear that one of their goals was to utilize the bluespace drive (among other non-relevant things). The crew manifest at time had no command staff or any security. The hostage that was taken was the only engineer besides me, they have been assaulted and threatened to get the drive going. It should be noted that regular engineering personell isn't capable of completing that task alone. My character was faced two direct issues: 1.) A coworker and good friend of Knight was threatened, already (somewhat) injured and yelling for help. There was nobody else to take any action in any form. 2.) There was an immediate threat to the whole ship but utilizing the bluespace drive without the technical expertise and goodwill - Misuse or in proper use of the bluespace drive can result in heavy damage or even the destruction of the ship. The important context to both of those issues: - There was no command staff to start any form of proper negotiations or handle the situation. - There was no security to handle the antag directly in any form. - There was a direct threat to the crew. - There was a direct threat to the ship utilizing engineering equipment my character is directly responsible for/trained with. Low pop rounds with out command or security can generally be sometimes a bit difficult to balance with heavily armed antags (the goal is to have fun, not to "win" after all). With that context, let me explain what my way of thought was and how Bradley and others tackled the situation: As others have already said, the goal isn't / wasn't to hunt or arrest the antag. The in-character goals were to try to help the injured crew without taking extrem measures and handle the immediate threat to the ship if possible. The most obvious plan and also what happened was that I talked with the mentioned xeno scientist on how they could do that while not overstepping their role and expertise in-character (and, obviously, without directly breaking rules or powergaming). The solution was A.) to utilize the tranquilizer gun research has access to and B.) utilize plants the scientist grew that also contained sedating properties while C.) making use of the access an atmos tech have considering the situation was unfolding in the engineering department. The plan was to redirect the attention of the antag away from the bluespace drive and if possible, to help the injured crew with them in it. This is another reason, as why you were needed as a medical character. I like to make this very clear: The goal was not to hunt the antag or to scare them away, the goal was to help the crew and eliminate a direct threat to the whole ship. This shift in perspective is probably the first and most important step to finding a balance in this scenario, in my opinion. The action then unfolded like this: Bradley and the scientist entered the maints after looking into the drive using the cameras. Their idea was to get the antag out and busy with the scientist that was able to (non-lethally, this is important in my opinion) to keep the antag busy, while Bradley tried to look after their coworker and the drive. And that pretty much played out like that - The antag did follow the scientist and Bradley was able to look into the room. To our own surprise, the tools we had chosen did not only keep the antag busy, but managed to sedate them. We were then (involuntarily) faced with the situation of what do to them (to cite the ingame vibe at that time, between multiple people: "Oh shit, what do we do now?"). To completely get rid of an antag without security/command and on low pop isn't/wouldn't have been fun for anyone, so that clearly was not an option. So we looked again for the tools we had at our disposal and science had their containment cell. It's now important to add: When looking at the sedated antag, we purposefully did not remove all their gear - There never was the intention to stop the gimmick of the round in it's track. That is also the reason the antag broke out of the cell (Suprise! Surprise! Sometime you have to play along to make it a fun round). After a couple of chases around some maints, the antag vanished around the ship and the plan failed from an IC-perspective. OOCly, this gave more then a full hour of stuff to do for most of the low pop crew at this time. In the end, the antag managed to get back into the drive and do some stuff with it. They did execute the engineer they managed to catch again (with their consent) as the engineer failed to setup the drive (due to IC lack of knowledge). This led to the antag to break of their mission and leave for good, as it also was closing in on the end of the round. Just close of that / in parallel at the end, a security officer did come up and Bradley dropped everything to quickly brief said officer and get them rolling instead of continuing anything on our own. So - What is the difference I see in what you were trying to accomplish from what you shared in your posts? - Bradley was directly involved in the gimmick as it was about the bluespace drive. - Without any form of command and security, there was nothing else to do but to interact with the antag in some way due to the pending threat to the ship from an engineering perspective. - The tools used and actions taken were in the skillset and expertise of engineering and research. - The antag was given a lot of advantages on purpose and no lethal options were planned to be used. (The tranquilizer gun shot missed, and science threw plants at them...) - No weapons like content from the armory was used. The goal wasn't to scare the antag "away" but to keep them busy to help the injured crew. - The plan was "bait and run away", not "arm up and threaten". I know, for a fact, that would I have asked to get a gun from the armory, I would've been told no. No questions asked. What goes for you, goes for me as well. I have no doubt about that. Perspective matters. I hope this answers your primary concerns about that round. Additionally, I like to mention something that seemed to have bothered you in-round from my perspective: When Bradley arrived, a while later, I asked you for the captains spare card you were carrying. My thought in that scenario was, as mentioned before, some interaction with the antag was necessary and without command, utilizing resources from other departments like science and engineering sounded reasonable. In addition, it didn't feel right ICly to have a character that is not even fully employed yet (a training role OOCly, a resident ICly) to have the captains spare card. Bradley (and others) felt responsible for taking said card to keep it secure. This does not imply we didn't want you to have it, but rather to keep it in the hands of personell with higher responsibilities at that time. The fact that you were wearing a locked hardsuit on your back was only made known way way late in the round. Of course we would've helped you out of that suit if we had known earlier. When you did share the issue, it was in a rather high intensity moment without much time for that. Whether or not it was appropriate for you to get in the possession of the captains spare card or wear the hardsuit is not for me to decide. I hope I was able to give some insight into the round and what I think is different about the approaches the low pop crew chose during that round. My personell suggestion is: Ahelp when things are unclear and maybe ask for directions instead of asking for allowance, the staff is genuinely welcoming and helpful in this regard! I remember having the similar questions about how to handle such situations when I joined Aurora. Let me know if anything else is unclear to you that I might be able to clear up further. P.S.: It doesn't feel great to read about somebody asking to ban people in an informal complaint because you had an apparently different experience then they had. I'm certain the staff will take action when needed without asking for drastic measures...

Not planned. @Fluffy explicitly pointed out to me to add only one and i concur. Also, i suggest moving PR related comments into the PR, my PMs or code-dungeon to keep the thread cleaner ❤️

The first step: Jaws of life for Atmos techs to resolve the issue of having to rely on engineers. https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/20138