Synnono

Not sure if I'm somehow relevant to this. As for my involvement, I was playing agent Stefanie Matis at the time and participated in the initial interview with Aiko along with Sharp's character Raymond Hawkins. The two of us had decided that the story Aiko provided was extremely hard to believe. Stefanie's recommendation was to keep Aiko in detainment, or barring that, to keep her escorted by security in low-clearance areas only, and to separate her from her hardsuit, which was revealed to have potential scientific significance in the questioning. The escalation from that, to a full-lethal manhunt, is not something I was privy to, even with an ear on security comms. As an afterthought though - the moment Aiko cut someone's throat, accidental or not, would be the moment I would have authorized a lethal response, if I had been in a position to authorize one. Once people get hurt, it's less realistic to expect a non-violent resolution to conflict. It's even less realistic when you flee from people willing to point lethal weapons at you. Resisting at that point is asking to be shot.

In the context of playing in a community that labels itself as "Heavy Roleplay," I believe that we are somewhat obligated to make it matter, yes. Observance of the setting and how it's implemented, playing characters faithful to the canon, and not excessively handwaving details we don't like, is part of what the 'heavy' means to me. To me, the backstory of the game world is there to serve the player characters and help drive their interactions. Sidelining character-driven stories in service of advancing the timeline at large feels backwards to me. And I do feel like it's sidelining them. The fifteen days you're okay with for a year is not enough time for me. Even if there were some really awesome events planned for the lore off-station, if we rushed to get to them, they'd be gone just as fast, and then we'd just be looking to the next thing. What happened an RL month ago? Ah, who cares, it's been two years, move on. I don't like the idea of taking a week off from the game and missing six months of extremely-relevant politics. And if I were a lore-writer (not that I can speak for any of them) I would not like feeling compelled to fill those six months with meaningful storylines every seven days.

Hi Garnascus, I was only nominally a witness to the incident in the ban appeal thread, but I did want to make a short post here in the hopes of getting clarity on staff policy concerning old/expired warnings. I posted in that appeal thread with a quote from you, in the hopes that someone could determine whether or not it applied here: With the caveat that context in the other thread may be important, and while I obviously don't have access to Manfred's notes, if the connection being made is between this occurrence and an incident from 2015, I would not personally classify that as a pattern of consistent behavior. I want to be sure I'm not using your words entirely out of context in the appeal thread. Is the philosophy in your quote being applied to this ban, or is this case situationally different in terms of warnings not expiring, the nature of the existing warnings, or in the escalation of discipline staff chose to use? Thank you for clarifying. I think that's all I have to ask/add to this.

I think I saw these threads in the wrong order. I put my thoughts on this down in a suggestion thread. The TL;DR of that post is that I voted no. I find much more value in taking things slow, and investing in why a character exists in the world at a certain time in their life.

I'm personally for leaving things as they are. While I can appreciate the potential for some characters to believably progress out of their starting roles using accelerated time, that's just about the only thing I like about the idea. Age, if completely unacceptable for a job, is one uncomfortable retcon away from being fixed, and while those aren't great, I think they make a better per-character solution than placing everyone onto a new default speed setting. It already happens. The person who wants to try playing doctor with their nineteen year-old nursing intern is not going to wait for the requisite game years to roll by at any speed. They're just going to change their age and play, or try to play it at nineteen, get poked by staff, and then change their age and play. Thinking in short-term, workday terms, I feel like several elements of our rounds just don't play nicely with some of the time scales proposed here. It just mechanically does not work for me, for a miner to be out for 24+ relative hours in an exosuit, or for a raider team to spend a relative week on the station hiding from (the same four) security officers, or for a casual conversation between work tasks to take half a day. Things like paperwork get confused. The already-terrible DTG will get even terrible-er.* * Disclaimer: DTG comment was maybe a joke don't hurt me CCIA Our rounds feel short-form for a reason, and to me that's because most of them are showcasing sudden, stressful periods of emergency conditions that impress some degree of urgency on the crew. I feel like making everything take place over longer time periods diminishes that a bit, and it doesn't pay back much. Nikov pointed out that Hypatia did it. I think it worked better there, because Hypatia was a peaceful server without antagonists. When all there is to play with are the characters and their relationships with each other, it makes exploring them over an extended term a bit more appealing to me. By comparison, we have a lot to distract us here. It takes even longer to explore simple relationship-building interactions when ninja are slashing the place up, and glossing over even more of that by saying "time's passed, we can assume X Y and Z" feels lazy and dissatisfying. As things are, enough canon stuff takes place during the shifts of a RL day that I can stitch together a story of what my character has learned or done for that day's canonical workday, while cutting out all the non-canon stuff. And I still get to have my head blown off by a traitor now and then! It's a pretty good deal. Thinking longer-term too, there are things worth considering. By default, I like to play a slice of life, rather than the whole life, or whole career. Unlike my real life, where the value of what I'm focused on or interested in constantly gets reassigned based on my goals and needs, usually my characters exist for certain narrative purposes. The rebellious eighteen-year-old leaving home, or an expectant or new mother, or the corrupt police chief a year away from retirement, or someone coping with the fallout of a divorce, or the death of a parent all lose a lot of relevance after a few years pass. Zahra's 'long-term' goal might realistically take a couple of years at this point. It's a driving force behind why she is where she is, doing what she does. Without it, she'd want to leave NT and pursue something else. Reinventing that motivation in-character every so often so that I have a reason to keep her on a space station, and simultaneously re-evaluating why I the player would want to roleplay that new motivation feels a bit too forceful. And once you can't do that anymore, and that character's natural story is over and they go away, it all becomes a concern for every character that comes afterward, too. It's too much of a trade off for some job-mobility between roles. We get twenty character slots. Time itself does not need to change for someone to experience the mechanical, work side of the game. If you want to not play an intern, cadet, or assistant for the real time it would take to gain job skills and experience, employ an adult and not a teenager. Write in partial training, or a recent demotion that they're trying to work back from. The slow burn is a good burn. Carefully planning a character, and finding ways to invest in who they are and why they exist in that specific time in their lives, will always win out for me.

An alternative to the cargo part of the supply chain being a 'problem' might be to spread and enforce the idea that only certain orders need Command approval, like supermatter cores and machine guns and bees and other such nonsense. The rest can be ordered at Cargo's discretion? Put a little asterisk next to the dangerous ones on the console, for the regulation-impaired?

There are going to be a lot of disappointed physicists out there.

Ah, you weren't doing the pinning. Other folks seemed to be hollering about it. Anyway...short answer, yes, code books are neat. While people might call them redundant mechanically, and whether or not situations like these should be clarified at all for the benefit of uncertain Rev, Mutiny and Malf rounds is another discussion, I like them as a roleplay device.

For the incident in question, the device (and even the person) that stamps the orders was under suspicion. A stamp would not have cleared up much in this case, and I believe the spirit of the suggestion is to provide additional means to verify transmissions in cases like this one. I think what I got hung up on during the round was my personal concept of a burden of proof, in regards to the orders. If it were so easy to declare central's orders 'possibly' fake and therefore unacceptable and contrary to NanoTrasen's best interests, nothing corporate and evil would ever get done even with implanted personnel. My personal interpretation, and the stance Stefanie took, was that until the orders are confirmed to be false, they need to be assumed true. Yes, it would have been an impossible burden of proof in that particular roundtype, without a suggestion such as this being implemented. I was of the mind that having Command obey (or at least fight each other on whether to) was more to the antagonist's plan and the development of the story in the round. Being subverted by a scenario or antagonist's action is one of the best excuses we get to potentially break our own characters for sake of storytelling, and I am typically eager to give in to it. Even though it's a common scenario to encounter in our antag rounds, the notion of a relay-stamped and CCIA-signed order (from a known agent, that at least some of us have seen before) being faked strikes me as remote. While it would be extremely concerning to learn that the relay was attacked by a hacker, I wasn't convinced it established the falsity of the orders as transmitted. And with that in mind, I wasn't convinced someone with a chip in her head telling her to obey the orders would have enough reason to overcome that. We were given a deadline, and there was only so much to be done in terms of delay. Pinning it on the AI seemed like a logical stretch, given that its nonstandard law (as visible to the crew) was to obey NanoTrasen above all else. Again, concerning, but an abnormally loyal AI doesn't cast further doubt on the orders. If anything, it could even have 'verified' them itself if we took the laws in good faith and it decided to roleplay that angle.

I don't know if I was participating closely enough in this to be considered 'involved' in this incident, but since I was in the round and near the site, I'll add my two cents. I was playing Stefanie Matis, the IAA, and one of the people who was in an EVA suit crowding the bridge firelocks. I was purposefully meddling, trying to take photographs of the damage for an eventual report on the shift and intruder, and attempting to RP just a bit of a nuisance in the process. I can confirm that in the moments I was meddling my way onto the bridge, I did witness Manfred Hayden behind multiple inflatable walls. He did not appear to be repairing the damage to the bridge. The only report that I heard (and remembered) concerning any venting of the halls was made by the AI in the form of an announcement. I can also confirm the character qualities and flaws Nikov is describing in this appeal. I have had extensive conversations and interactions with the character during other rounds as Zahra Karimi, and can say with some certainty that Manfred is every bit as self-destructively selfless as he appears to be. In my opinion, he puts more effort into role-playing this trait and others consistently than the majority of players I witness on the server. Oftentimes, doing so leads to Manfred's death, or the failure of his objectives as an antagonist, and to me that is indicative of behavior that is the opposite of powergaming. The player tends to put the character before the game, whether that means Manfred is well-suited or poorly-suited to whatever situation is ongoing. He's been a believable hero and a believable horror in the past. I don't think he does either to play-to-win. Finally, while not a member of staff, I am capable of shamelessly quoting one from another thread: With the caveat that context in the other thread may be important, and while I obviously don't have access to Manfred's notes, if the connection being made is between this occurance and an incident from 2015, I would not personally classify that as a pattern of consistent behavior.

My experience thus far has been that Command Staff will lean towards insisting that morally-sketchy orders are false regardless of the proof, as long as there is some sort of potential for doubt. We recently played a round in which a fax came through as stamped by the quantum relay and signed by CCIA Daniel Bay. While they were sketchy as hell and probably indeed fake, since it was an AI Malfunction round, with the evidence at the time of delivery it would have been very difficult to prove. The CE refused the orders on moral grounds, and since he wasn't implanted it made plenty of sense. However, the HoS and canonically-implanted Captain and HoP characters all ended up not carrying them out, on the suspicion that the relay might be compromised. The indication that the relay could be compromised came well after the orders arrived, and everyone just sort of seemed to delay until they had an excuse to refuse them. One of them even resigned and committed suicide rather than do the job the implant would have required them to do (and I'm not sure that in itself would have been permitted by the implant under some interpretations). While loyalty implants and what they should do are an entirely different and ongoing issue, I think the urge that players seem to get to not play 'the bad guys' is going to unfortunately win out over faithful loyalty roleplay much of the time. I'm not sure a cipher will fix that. Edit: Despite the mini-rant written above, to get back on-topic again: I do like the idea of some sort of cipher codebook for this purpose. Having some way to verify transmissions is common sense to me, and would help clarify when people SHOULD be feeling compelled to accept contentious orders, even if they continue not to in reality.

The Xenobiologist tends to die in the first twenty minutes of the round (or spends the shift trying to make slime people), the mining staff (usually) don't bring the department a donking thing, and cargo staff in most cases will categorically refuse any order I try to make as a Lab Assistant, even though the need is such that a lab in a priority department will stop working if it's not filled. If we're not lucky enough to have a Head of Staff in science who is willing to go lean on cargo and stamp the orders, it just seems to degrade into people pestering each other within science. If that's what's intended, it certainly isn't all that fun.

What does this even mean?

Supported. Please reduce instances of roboticists breaking into RnD/Ordering cyborgs to break into RnD to steal the less-than-fifty sheets from the lathes. Having too many robots is very rarely a problem during a round, in my opinion. Let 'em build.

It wasn't my intention for that afterthought to somehow diminish the rest of what I wrote up there. It also wasn't a promise, low-hanging or otherwise. I just haven't felt incredibly pulled toward the species yet, and I imagine that a new overseer is going to bring new ideas to the background that might change that. My endorsement (for as little as it's worth) was more for the player's consistency, tendency for thoughtful reflection, and willingness to work with people (the things I feel I can personally speak to) than it was for any specific point of Tajaran lore. Other people who are more invested in what is already written are going to do a better job of scrutinizing that here.

Living situation between shifts may be getting just a tidge too far off topic here, and is perhaps something for the lore team to consider elsewhere. It's worth recalling that hyper-realism isn't always/often the goal, but stupid corporate policies and silly implementations of 'good' ideas are persistent themes in the game and in our lore. We are traversing the distance between the ass-end of Tau Ceti and high Biesel orbit in two minutes on that transfer shuttle. Teleportation exists. Let's not think too hard about it and let folks live where they wanna live between rounds. I still think that the lighting could be believably implemented because it might as well be purposefully ignoring the various realities of the crew.

Or even if like...some amorous malf just wants to provide mood lighting! But yeah, having it be an option (and having that option affect power draw) seems about right.

Opening it up through Patreon/PayPal is my preference. Donations should not provide perks in game. All's right with the world.

Nikki's my Lab Assistant buddy! She displays consistent and believable levels of sanity and sense, and you write in such a way that makes it clear there's something to pull out of her. What's less clear is that there's a way for my characters to do that. It's hard to pursue her thoughts without getting the impression that they aren't meant for me, or that I'm not asking the right way. If there's a better hook to take her up on, I haven't seen it lying around yet. Aside from that, she's played to her age quite well, and in my opinion she expresses all the doubt and wonder someone of her experience might feel, out in the backend of Tau Ceti. Thanks to some Shipping Manifest cheating, I am aware of and like the dynamic that exists between Monica and Robert, and have a few guesses as to why it exists. I haven't met Robert yet, but I will be judging your meanness when I do ;D

The only 'buff' I think I'd like to see to the AI is for it to gain the ability to convincingly 'sign' those fake centcomm messages. Mostly so people can't freak out that Alex Graves isn't the one telling us about the (fake) revolution on Biesel, or something. Even though they're supposedly listening to the announcement, not reading it. I dunno. As for the suggested changes, most of them seem useful to a violent AI, or appear to be breaking the laws of physics. I don't find murder computers to be all that fun in the first place, and the ability to magic a camera out of nowhere seems to defeat the purpose of having limited sight based on cameras in the first place. There are supposed to be blind spots, and as an otherwise all-seeing, all-powerful supercomputer, there has to be a weakness or three for the fleshy crew to exploit. Remember that most of them will be playing dumb, even when their players figure out the gamemode in the first ten minutes. It's a bit personal opinion, but the best malf isn't one that can control the station completely, or overcome the crew's tactics. It's the one that creates an exciting story and provides opportunities to the crew to interact in ways that aren't normal. Instead of unlockable cyborgs, powered-up turrets, and cameras to see anywhere when you're outed as rogue, it would be much more interesting to try and convince the crew to leave you be without strong-arming them into it. And if they kill you in the end? That's okaaaaaay, you did a thing, they responded to it, and now it's extended.

On a slightly-more-serious-but-probably-just-as-lesbay note... If we don't implement these in full, at least consider adding some sort of darkening on the legs to things like the nurse outfit and the black jumpskirt, and other clothes that are feminine and show off leg. It's a bit janky to wear any of it without proper hoisery.

Mofo's a great writer, extremely active, and one of the most thoughtful and respectful members of the community that I know. I have every bit of confidence he'd take great care of a wide subsection of the server lore, while integrating only a few hundred (more) references to Metal Gear into our wiki in the process. Additionally, he's very attentive to the forums and whitelists even though he isn't responsible for any of them, and has a track record of paying attention to detail to our game world in his CCIA role. I am six thousand percent in favor of him taking this position. It might even compel me to want to make a Tajara myself.

I'm fairly certain that the contract uplink ninjas get doesn't have telecrystals because the ninja hardsuit has tools that are worth much more than twelve telecrystals.

Don't ninja already have access to a contract uplink? And there's the nifty and under-utilized web interface contracts too.

I-Is research the new lesbay?! HAVE I SUCCEEDED AT LAST?! GIVE ME MY SOCKS PLEASE