Merlin1230

For me Its less about the separation of duties between the roles, or even travel time, and more just that they should be besties and cooperate a lot! Service as a department can really struggle to be interconnected because of its very nature, and I feel like having them all close together helps with the department being more lively since being close together would encourage them to talk to eachother more outside of just work duties. Its honestly something that I think bartender especially struggles with in the layout thats currently ingame, since in order to interact with the kitchen and hydro, I have to leave my post entirely and have it out of LOS. Its not exactly something I can easily mix in while still talking with customers unless business is just dead. So technically, the kitchen could handle hydroponics being anywhere, but I think its more interesting for them to be next door or even integrated together like they are with the kitchen now just to help encourage them to RP with eachother and maybe even cooperate on in round projects or events. Some of my favorite moments as a bartender are me interacting with my fellow service workers, even if I mostly only get to talk to fellow bartenders in that regard.

I do think splitting up the trio could maybe work if it was the bar that was split from the other two; The bar only needs hydroponics for a few drinks, while the kitchen heavily relies on hydroponics to make a lot of dishes. Although, even then, I wouldnt like the kitchen being the one in the far off section since its (currently) the less popular role compared to bartender, and could probably really use the boost of customers from being in the center. Not that bartender couldnt make use of it, either. I have a little concern about the chapel being more isolated down there since it definitely would be more difficult to attract visitors walking by from that hallway. I havent played chaplain, so I dont know how much difficulty they have in that from their current position (my gut tells me people might write them off if they dont have a religious character, but thats mostly conjecture since I again, havent played chaplain), but it might be something thats a downgrade from the move- not that the ops hallway gets a lot of traffic anyways. I do really like the layout though outside of the confessional not having private booths, its all pretty solid. Although, you may want to add in a second set of vents and scrubbers into the main room, considering both the size of it, and also that it will have a lot of people in it at once when gatherings do happen. Justttt to make sure people dont trigger the air alarm by breathing more air then the room can recycle. The machinist workshop being where it is in this change I think is probably my favorite part. While machinist is a odd one out and could probably be reasonably put anywhere, being next to operations as the department theyve been assigned to will probably help in giving them more cohesion with the hangar techs, since right now they dont have much reason to say hi outside of the fact they share a radio channel and gossip together.

Because I didnt see anyone mention it, I do want to point out that mindshields are also very difficult for skrell to commit to as well, and not just unathi since mindshields also block psionics. Skrell going abroad already have to deal with the fact that they wont be able to meaningfully interact with a lot of people psionically, which is one of their main forms of communication, and then adding a mindshield on top of that is effectively tossing out such a core part of being a skrell. Its not unreasonable ICly for the SCC to have fears about psionics and it influencing their staff, but the forced mindshields OOCly feels kinda limiting for me trying to conceptualize a skrell captain since they all have to pass through the barrier of "Would they be this devoted to the SCC to live in silence for however long they have this posting", which in my mind is not exactly a simple barrier to pass. Also, for the antag thing, giving antags leeway doesnt have to mean they let the antag do whatever they want. I feel like you could not let a antag easily convert you as a captain, but still give them leeway by for example, not reporting that they tried to do that so that they have space to pivot and their round isnt immediately ended because they went for it. Improv loves their "Yes, and"s, but theres also a time and place for "No, but". Like, maybe instead of converting the captain, offer to arrange for someone else to be converted, whether just to save your own skin or in a genuine morbid interest to see this through! There are plenty of options for a captain to play into a antag's gimmick without just accepting conversion. My understanding of the command whitelist as well is that part of it is to make sure that the people in command are people that consider and think about what helps make the round as fun as they possibly make it, and coming to the conclusion that their conversion as the highest authority on the ship might not be the best thing for the round would fall under that and would be a fair decision.. Hell, it might even be fine, theres enough people that could be riled up into taking action- If security is wililng to search and arrest consulars, even though doing so has so many more hoops then the captain, then theyd probably be willing to do it for the one at the top.

I do want to provide a personal anecdote because you specifically brought up TG, because TG does very little enforcement of that rule. I know this, because I was a stupid 14 year old once, and one of those stupid things was pretending I was an adult online, and I played on TG not caring about the rule. I was never questioned by their staff about how old I was or anything like that. The problem is that what you are wanting (to be able to conversations you wouldnt be able to have in front of a child, and to not have to worry if the other person you are RPing with is a minor) is a fair thing to want, but the TG method was never designed to facilitate that. The TG method is to have a certain level of maturity by turning some kids away that see the 18+ in the rules, and getting rid of any that are blantantly obvious about it. To have a space thats actually free of minors, you need to be a lot more proactive in age verification, which in turn needs to be a LOT more invasive. If it didnt need to be invasive, then ERP servers would have found a way that isnt ID checks like some do. It is INCREDIBLY difficult to do without breaching peoples privacy. Also, everyone that is objecting is not saying its important they are able to roleplay with random children on the internet. I dont think anyone comes to aurora for that, and I have a hunch that if someone did, the staff would take it very seriously and give them a strong boot out of the server.

From the perspective of someone that isnt staff and currently has a runaway synth in my rotation, I think purely hiding is the easy part. People arent gonna probe into your criminal side unless you give them a reason to, so theres a level of hinting you have to do if you want to make things interesting. At least as a runaway synth, that is, I imagine with drug smuggling the smuggling drugs part is enough of something to allow you to be given away. Like evandorf said, theres a lot of patience and carefulness you need to not get caught, but I do feel at the end of the day, if you arent caught and are perfectly hidden and unknown, then youre missing out on all of the fun risk tied to it! I DO know lore-wise theres a lottt of interesting hooks you can use for something like that (especially Konyang, theres Cheung-5, The Benevolent guilds, and the Golden Deep's Zaibatsu originate from there), and it could always be fun to have your character be unwillingly involved too!

Ive seen this take before on other servers, but I personally feel like convenience makes it easier for people to decide to join, not make it so less people join. Even with all the information someone can have before joining, it is still a gamble if youre gonna have a round where youre doing a lot of stuff, or if youre gonna be sitting around for 2 hours yapping and making small talk. As it is, our server is currently designed around antags driving the round and making it stand out from other rounds, but we have a very small population of antag players (at least for not merc), so theres a very real chance that a round doesnt have one and ends up being fairly quiet and blending in with every other round. 2 hours is a lot of time to commit to, and having less information wont make people decide to commit themselves to that gamble for 2 hours and seeing if it pays off. Really, the big issue is that current design requires antags for things to be interesting, which is already something NBT2 wants to work away from so that rounds can stand on their own more- and once they can, itll be less of a gamble of if joining a round wont be interesting. From personal experience, the manifest definitely influences my joining decisions, but not in a negative way. I can look at a department and go "Oh, theres a bunch of people in X department. I know I can at the very least have a lot of interaction with others in that department if I join it, even if the round as a whole ends up being quiet". I suppose I can technically be influenced into not joining if the department im in the mood for doesnt have players, but if Im not also in the mood to deviate and switch up what im playing, then I was already barely in the mood to play in the first place. The vast majority of times I dont end up playing, is because I wanna spend my time elsewhere for today, or anxiety. Actually, its mostly just anxiety. TBH, I think the fact we can see people visibly check the manifest and not join because checking the manifest is entirely done in a public access bot channel on the discord makes it FEEL like the manifest makes less people join, but I have a hunch that its close to the same if you couldnt see the manifest, just because beforehand you couldnt see people making that decision as it was entirely within their heads. Im curious just as a experiment if you had the server status and manifest get periodically updated in a channel no-one could post in so people didnt have to run commands to see the up-to-date status of the server if itd feel like less people make the decision to not join, just because you dont see people running the command and not joining.

I think I echo the sentiment from the bay-ers about being able to spend the points a bit more freely being more interesting to interact and customize with. As it stands, im pretty mixed on the education system, and while I understand its far from being in any final state, the direction it seems to be heading is that every individual job has its own, specific educations, and maybe even multiple different educations to be specialized in specific skills, when that specialization could be a choice the player makes through skill points. Having that choice be made through points introduces a kinda risk reward to it, because you can be specialized and the best at that skill instead of being just good enough to do your job with it, but now you cant take as many other skills to have a more varied, but less specialized skillset. The best example of this thats ingame right now I feel is the engineering specializations. Currently, theres engineering certification, which just gives you trained in all the engineering skills, but then theres a education for each specific engineering skill to give you professional in that one while still having the exact same occupational points as the engineering cert. You can easily just have the engineering cert, and then choose to spend your skill points in being a professional at one of them, which comes with a tradeoff that you cant invest into other skills. Thematically I think this tradeoff is actually kinda fun, because one of the main side-skills that most jobs can reasonably have is Exosuits, which... sacrificing your ability to be better then "just good enough" to be able to use a Exosuit to kinda enhance what theyd be able to physically acomplish, at the cost that on your own youre not the best at your job as someone that spent more "time" working without exosuits, is just a really interesting example to me of how skillpoints can make customizing a character more nuanced then picking a education and being able to be the best at one of your job skills AND still getting to invest into exosuits heavily. The mixologist education is similar to me, in that you can make that decision to be the best at the bartendering skill with skillpoints instead of just getting to be the best for free. While technically it matters less with the bartending skill because its mechanical impact is mostly fluff and something youd never notice, its just a example to me that the current design of educations is that job skill customization is mostly done through educations, which are a very limited set of options in comparison to the more freeform nature of spending points. I do think educations still have a good place, especially because for certain jobs youd have to spend a LOT of points just to be able to play that job (mostly medical, lets be honest), and educations can help make it not so debilitating just to play a Surgeon, but I dont think they should be giving you skills beyond the minimum for a job for free. That I personally feel should be a choice that is made through points, because doing so can allow for some more interesting tradeoffs to emerge. Also, side tangent that I dont feel super strongly about, the categories are kinda weird to me. I feel odd having all my combat points unspent because I just dont make characters thatd have combat experience. I get the point is stop some random smuck from being absolutely amazing at combat, but itd be nice if I could do something with the points that isnt combat related. Maybe you can spend combat points in the everyday and occupation categories, but you cant spend occupation and everyday points in the combat category?

While I didnt really get to see any of the commanding done in that really hectic round since I was just a bartender, the fact they came down and had food and drinks at the kitchen and the bar is already a really good sign. It can be way too easy to be all cooped up as command I feel, and the fact they put effort into mingling with the rest of crew when they werent bogged down in the chaos of the round is a plus in my books.

1. I wasnt exactly sure what date would make sense, especially since I wasnt exactly sure if Lago de Abundancia would be something Idris would send a newly made IPC given the conditions. Generally though, the idea is that most of their early years would be spent there, and when the mandate rolled around, theyd still be young enough to be impressionable and have the mandate impact them, but not so young that theyd be very undeveloped and so impressionable that the effects of the mandate overtake what was already there- a sort of middle ground that leads to whatve theyve developed sort of adapating and fusion with the new ideas and circumstances presented. With that said... I think ~2458 might make sense for when they were assigned to Lago, with their manufacturing date following closely behind that based off however much time Idris thinks theyd need to be prepared for the posting, if at all (considering they sent more IPCs there when their capacity to handle them was already strained, I figure this wouldnt be a particularly high bar, at least from Idris' view). 2. I feel like initially, given the fact their posting in lago meant they may be going with maintenance for a while, I feel like that may have developed into having a bit more comfort with not being at peak condition. Thats not to say theyd willingly let themself get damaged if they can help it, but rather theyd be less pressed to get something fixed as long as they can still function practically. Something they are used to going through but not something they try to go through. Their thought when it comes to more actively perserving themself would've been sticking to the people around them- in this case, their coworkers- and making sure to stay on good terms. Being made for service work, theyd probably quickly pick up socializing as one of the primary ways to acomplish this- make friends with those working with you, so when you arent at peak condition, they can help make up for that and might even end up protecting you. Plus, itd probably look good for Idris if everyone got along. After the mandate, I imagine there'd be bit of a shift away from focusing on others to help protect them- Not entirely getting rid of that thought, considering El Menaje is how they are still functioning today, but just starting to give some thought and focus to their own individual ability to protect themself. Putting all of the eggs in the basket of relying on their coworkers and Idris didnt really work out when all of that was taken down so abruptly in the fighting. Because of that, theyd place much more focus on improving their own ability to protect themself- Not exactly by learning to fight, but more like making a effort to learn how to mitigate any damages when they cant see a machinist right away, anything to help them stand on their own just a bit better rather then purely relying on other's skillsets to fill in the gaps of their own. Plus, itd help them support the community more, which means the community can support them better in turn. It turns out, knowing how to socialize with humans well isnt exactly the best for helping a fellow synthetic get repaired when the humans are mostly busy fighting eachother in the streets. 3. I suck at taking the ideas of personality that are in my head and putting them into writing, but I will try my best. From their nature as a service unit, I feel like they wouldve taken a sort of calm, soothing manner of speaking, mainly in a effort to make customers feel at ease- keeping them calm and relaxed means a better work performance, and could help mitigate any potential violence from a uppity customer. This sort of customer service hasnt really left them when it comes to just normal non-work conversations, either- Even after the mandate, theyre still just used to speaking with that sort of warm tone theyve picked up, just out of it being what theyre used to, and thinking its still good to have people be relaxed as much as possible. From their time with El Menaje, I imagine theyve picked up a side interest in tinkering- Making things, fixing them.. There wasnt much a service unit could do when it came to fixing other synthetics, but they did try their best to assist the machinists at work, and even spending their free time trying to learn those more technical skills. While nowhere near the technical expertise of said machinists, it was a small thing they picked up both to help themself and others, especially when it came to the various ramshackle constructions that were made for El Menaje. Plus, it reinforced this idea of practicality thats been developing from all the time spent in low resource/logistic situations. A sense of having things work "good enough" and being able to acomplish their goal, rather then spending too much effort and resources making it go above and beyond. I think a word Im looking for is Frugal, kinda. Of course, theyd still try go above and beyond for work, especially in a effort to not attract any suspicion and to stay in Orion's good graces, But otherwise they try to be as conservative as they can. A notable belief I feel as well is a strong communal outlook on things, even the things they do for theirself, ultimately draw from a desire to better help the whole. Which, happens to line up with the Integrationist teachings pretty well! 4. Theyd, pretty obviously, view the integrationist sect on biesel pretty positively, both supporting their beliefs pretty well, and they were also the ones to give help to El Menaje in their time of need. In a way, they feel like a extension of the sect in mendall, despite the differences that have emerged with how the locals of El Menaje believe it exactly, and they dont really see that as a issue. When it comes to the Trinary on orepit, however, they have a lot more mixed feelings. There isnt hate, more of just concern towards how they do things. Their focus on a strong, centralized church alongside the fact they view other sects as being astray, is something that Panucho feels is hurtful to the eventual ascension- after all, a consciousness with a variety of views and perspectives sounds more solid then one with the knowledge of synthetics all preaching the same thing. Despite that, they help them all the same, seeing no benefit from working against them. For the Exclusionists, they feel their efforts are hurtful to the cause- their actions can cause humans to look on the perfection more negatively, which can come back in the form of harsher discrimination. Plus, all the big powers in the spur are run by organics- making a enemy of them just sounds like a quick way to be snuffed out, in Panucho's eyes.