ChevalierMalFet

UPDATE: Oh my God, I just realized I've been spelling Felipe's name wrong this entire time. It should be Estigarribia, in reference to a character from the Traveller campaign setting with the same surname.

How about "Station Master," if everyone really hates Captain so much? I feel myself pushed to eschew a bland, corporate title, because the Captain, due to the realities of living dangerously in space far from immediate assistance, necessarily has to exert more control over the crew (the crew, from the bridge) than would the manager of an office tower.

Not that I have any actual skin in this game, but because I'm the deuteragonist in this story - I played Subhash Gokhale - I'll chime in with my two cents about what happened, in chronological order to the best of my memory. 1) At the very start of the shift, one of the ninjas, in full ninja attire, shows up at the security desk and says that they lost their card. Thankfully, the team all seems to be on the same page about this - we're going to give the ninja a mulligan on this one and pretend, as gently as possible, that this never happened. We take her picture and build her a security file, and I wander off to talk to the captain. 2) After a brief digression with some engineers who came onto the bridge to install the shield, I have a chat with the Captain about what we should do about this unannounced, unregistered, unmanifested visitor. 3) While I am talking with the Captain, somebody in security reports that said visitor can both teleport and damage APCs. I ask the Captain what we should do about that, and he says to yank the ninja's gear. 4) The ninja's gear cannot be yanked, nor can the ninja be handcuffed. This is an important point to remember for later. We have to call in a medical professional to cut the rigsuit off the ninja, who goes into the Warden's custody for contraband. I also get their Syndicate contract computer. 5) Wanting to spread the pollen of love, I take the two pieces of gear - the rig module and the syndicate contract computer - and walk it down to Research so that they can have some fun with it. As I go, I spot a Bluespace Technician zapping off Ash LaCroix's clothes over and over again. I shrug inwardly and keep walking. 6) I find some people in research, shove it into their hands, and walk back. 7) At this point, things start happening more quickly, but if I'm correct then at this point a Bluespace Technician - or someone with that name - is also in a Ninja suit, there's a scuffle, and they detonate themselves. This is later retconned, or something, but the Captain gets killed and I don't. 8) Another Ninja announces their presence, announces that they have a hostage, and demands the return of the captured ninja and the captured equipment. I try to negotiate, and since his demands are limited to the stuff we don't actually own - he just wants his loot back - I figure that it's safer, if they actually have hostages, to just give it to them. 9) I go down to research again, meet with a scientist who has the rigsuit, and ask for the stuff back. He says that the Captain wants him to experiment with it, and either I take him at his word or else I call it in, I don't recall. Either way, I leave him with the equipment and head back, preparing to organize a repulsion. I think carp are also an issue at this time, as are rogue slimes. 10) Some time passes. Tensions rise. The Captain is present but incommunicado, and I have no idea whether I'm supposed to talk or fight. At some point, somebody - I think it's Ash LaCroix again - gets the bright idea that the rigsuit has to be matched with the ninja's ID card, and now we're cooking with gas. It apparently works. There's also a biohazard at some point, though it may have been earlier or later. 11) It is at this point that the events Chaz described occur. From my visual perspective, it was the Captain and RD shouting into one ear that Gainsboro needs to give up the suit, and Gainsboro announcing in the other that he won't do it. I wheedle him continuously for about five minutes, to no avail. 12) Finally, Gainsboro returns to the brig. I catch him charging two weapons in wall chargers, and tell him that I need him to render the loot right now. This is about the tenth time I've made this order explicit, and he refuses it all the while. 13) I decide that since there is now a biohazard, and an active hostage situation with a shooter who has suicide bombs, and a non-compliant Security Officer who is standing 10 feet away from me, carrying or concealing very dangerous equipment, and holding a gun in each hand, that enough is simply enough. Discipline has failed and it needs to be restored with prejudice. I go for my e-pistol, prepared for - let's put it how it is - a summary execution. 14) Gainsboro is quicker on the draw than I am, because I have to switch my gun to lethal. He pops off a shot at me with the ion cannon, rendering my gun useless. Now that it's an active mutiny situation, I pursue with flashbangs but do not manage to catch him with one. 15) I follow Gainsboro round a corner, and round a corner again, and - look! There's the last hostile, right in front of the bridge! I draw my baton, ready to join in the melee and catch him before he can teleport away, but its charge is gone - I've been shot by an ion rifle. Lacking any other viable stun equipment, I switch to Harm and go to town on the guy until he's down. Remembering that these guys cannot be cuffed, can teleport, and can explode, I figure the only way to contain him is to beat him into non-functionality - so I him a few more times for good measure until I see the 'X scream!' message. 16) The ninja managed to slice the shit out of me, so I had to spend a while tracking down medical, being healed, and recharging and replacing my equipment. As such, I did not participate in the rest of the round's events. If I were to personally criticize anybody's actions during that round, it would be the Bluespace Technician, but that's neither here nor there.

Oh, Zahra Karimi? +1, no question.

The station is indeed a ship in every dramatic sense that matters; it just happens to be stationary. As for oil rigs, I got 538,000 hits for 'oil rig captain' and 409,000 for 'oil rig manager.'

Methinks this got started by a conversation I was part of on the ACN Discord, so I'll add the same two cents here as I added there: the station is a ship and ships have to have captains. This is not a military thing specifically; cargo ships and cruise ships have captains, too, and it's not just to look cool. Oil rigs also have captains, because their business is fundamentally the same - they are isolated places outside the immediate reach of civil interference, meaning that the Captain has to have a higher level of control over the facility than would the manager of an office tower. The Exodus, like the Aurora before it, has a brig - a jail. The station doesn't have a jail solely to hold captured borders or invaders, though that's certainly a part of it. The brig is also there to serve as an instrument of punishment for the crew, and that's the key difference. If NT built a laboratory in the middle of downtown Mendell, then there'd be no brig. There would be a security department, and that security department might well have real guns, but there'd be no 'punishment room' - punishments would be resolved administratively, by docking their pay or by suspending them or by firing them outright, or if it was a real legal issue, then the police would get involved. The Captain of a ship, or an oil rig, or a space station, cannot simply call for police, or call for help, or pass the buck away from himself - though Lord knows people try, what with the fax machines and all. The Captain is the ultimate authority on the station because there needs to be one; the remoteness, the inaccessibility, and the danger of space means that the Captain needs the power to, well, use the threat of force to compel people to do what he wants. I am strongly in favor of keeping the Captain as the Captain, because the closer the station comes to being an office block that happens to be floating in space, the more the texture starts to disintegrate.

Hives don't need 'a good excuse to get rid of' someone. If somebody doesn't fit the program, they just get liquidated, or don't get let out of VR.

To my brothers, cousins, and K'lax friends as well, from your New Gibson Three, The work involved in preparing this newsgroup was considerable, but thankfully most of it was simply figuring out the index functions and getting a valid registration. (It turns out that most humans have no idea how to adjust the water pressure in their showers, a task I could sort out for my neighbor in about 30 seconds - building bridges is better than burning them!) Tremendous thanks must go to my good brother KAZ-Tlakhu, who put together the Zo'Rane font and keyboard map-set. If you don't already have it, you can find it attached to this message. Regretfully, our work in mapping it to a Unicode display-set is still incomplete, and the best course of action we've found is to simply pass around .jpg files filled with writing. (Tutorial attached, if you need it.) Tedious though it may seem, it's still an improvement over 1.0 - we had to use the mouse cursors and draw each glyph. Even with my digita-mods, it took hours. (Iterate, iterate!) In the first place, I want to re-iterate something that people have been asking about. No, I am not on any team working on a new Relay, and no, none of the people who are - if, indeed, anyone is - are telling me about it. Nobody tells me anything anymore since I drew the Black Number. I will say, among my Material brothers, that I would rather work for a rotted Kois-pod with four little eyes drawn on it than have to submit my factor-pieces to Ice-Comet-Temple again; I blame them completely for the signal-dampening problems that led to our discovery last time. "More is always better, my brother, if we have the power - and we have the power!" I was Anointed by Uyat'tle'klozha, thank you very much, and if Thunder-and-Diamonds had listened to me about the broadband issues then everything would have gone perfectly. I don't want to say that we'd already be evacuated, but things would definitely be better. Anyway, I have been talking to KAZ-Tlakhu and ZAZ-Tlexa - who, by the by, has put in his papers for a promotion, and it seems like he'll get it, so congratulations there - and I think this is a solid step forward for us. Give this address out like water, and bring in as may of us as you can. We, your New Gibson three, are all convinced that the only way our situation will get any better here is if we stick together, work together, and communicate. We are giving every spare moment to integrating our font and making this even easier, and I've even blueprint'd up a new model keyboard. I for one think it's refreshing to go back to text! Organic support for creative spacing will come shortly. As far as newsgroup functions go, there should be a 'REPLY' button somewhere and it'll shoot up into the catalog, and anyone who comes later can browse them all. Thoughts of the day, I have been putting together some really wonderful poetry about what it was like to draw the Black Number and get launched out into the Material. I am experimenting with amphibrachic verse and finding it quite alluring. Just because we are out here doesn't mean we have to abandon what's best about us. I also find it absurd, the way that Men think we're dreamless robots; I mean, the Viax are, of course, but anyone who thinks the Akaix of Zo'Ra have no feelings has clearly never taken cognition of the Weeping Songs - or communicated with KAZ-Tlakhu (with love!) for more than five minutes. With sweet regards, one Ka'Akaix'Zishik Zo'Ra who is dreaming of better things

According to the Avowal of Responsibility CCIA Notice: How this is supposed to work is we either get faxed the paper by central command, or otherwise get a screenshot of the paper or just all around get proof that it was done somehow. Then we put it into your CCIA records so that all heads of staff can see it in the CCIA section of your employment records. It is permanent and carries between shifts. I was present when Captain Hegarty faxed the papers in, though I couldn't stick around long enough to see if there was a reply.

So, by the by, today Za'Akaix'Tlexa Zo'Ra actually got two Heads of Staff (Joseph Hartsock, HoS, and Dina Hegarty, Captain) to sign off on his responsibility and promotion papers to Security Officer! Is this permanent?

That's it, really. Whenever I play HoS, I order one all the time. It makes the room look much nicer if it's adequately lit.

All right, mark me down.

I've never played with Discord before, but it might be worth it to participate in this.

I might be interested. I'd play a Dunmer spellsword from a fallen aristocratic family.

Implementation will be detailed shortly. So apparently this exists now!

And then Chefs can make sushi, or smoke the fish and make nova lox.

So, how are we going to implement this one-off promotion system?

Updates on my characters: Diego Alatriste: Named for a character in a novel I'm reading, Diego Alatriste kind of 'floats' between engineering specialties - he only has one in a given round, but it changes between rounds so far. I did this because I was nervous about my engineering chops and I wanted to create another enlistee - I couldn't spiritually justify having Amrapurkar go back to regular work after being given his officiate. NICEBOT: I'm NICEBOT! After the whole Ajit Patil fiasco, I felt the urge to go back to the fields and cleanse my mind, so I made a helpful, humble little robot. NICEBOT seems to spend a lot of time in engineering, and likes to give out 'nice facts' - bits of uplifting or heartwarming information. Hrzgelam Siirimlaz: A low-skilled Tajaran janitor/cargotech, he was the character on my Tajaran application. I've only played him once. Works in service or supply, but is secretly capable of kicking ass. And in other news, Ajit Patil has officially retired, leading to Felipe Estigabarria taking the occassional Captain nod.

Thats pretty unimaginitive of them to only want to deal with the basics. When the fridge is fully stocked is a perfect time for a chemist to experiment with advanced mixes, chemical smoke grenades, and making performance enhancing drugs for security You could say the exact same thing about another chemist doing it though I think time is the important factor here. If a research borg is doing chemistry, then its not doing research. Cyborgs are designed to hop around jobs and help where they're needed most Scientists do this all the time though. Being able to construct machines is part of the job description for science, they often make things for research use Its usually RPed that synthetics have access to a database to look up any information they need. As a reasearch borg he didnt have the tools to build things himself, i dont see an issue with instructing someone else as for permissions, synthetics are bound to their laws, not to corporate regulations. The only problem i could see with permissions is if you told him to stop and he didnt, because they have a law to obey crewmembers. Station bound synthetics are literally above corporate regulations, but they also have no rights. If something about cadmus annoys you, order him to stop doing it. If cadmus being in your department annoys you, order him to be reassigned to mining or something. Or demand him unlinked from the AI and given a new lawset, cadmus with PALADIN would be amusing There is kind of a problem that NT wouldn't want a cyborg who's so abrasive. But you don't fire cyborgs, they're not paid employeees with a right to freedom or their personality quirks, you repair them, and modify them, order them to act how you want. They are compelled to submit to modification by qualified personnel and to follow orders from station authority Is there any problem with cadmus breaking its laws? So is that the principle, then, Nanako? Modules are just manual toolsets, and borgs have unlimited skills selection and can instruct anyone to do anything? A borg with a willing assistant can open the door for them and talk them through whatever it wants done? The laws are just one part of the equation. What you're saying, or what I think you're saying, is that as long as Cadmus is technically not violating any of its laws, it is as perfect a borg as any other borg until someone explicitly requests the law change - which is a time-consuming and exacerbating process if you don't have the right people. Should we just make a note that whenever Cadmus is in a round with command staff, somebody has to say "Cadmus, new command: speak mildly and pleasantly to everyone?" Or can we just assume at some point that this is a problem that should be fixed off-camera, since there's no reason whatsoever not to do it? From an internal, IC perspective - why hasn't and why shouldn't someone have just said, "Cadmus, stop being a shitmouth" and have it stick? Who is benefiting from the status quo? Do we suddenly care what the machine wants?

During a malf round two days ago, cadmus entered chemistry and made anti radiation drugs despite being loaded with a janitor module, and having been such all round. Wasn't that the round where the CMO was incapacitated from the AI turrets and the medical doctor dead from an EMP? Essentially the entirety of medical, with no one to treat them or others who were hurt, incapacitated? Probably it was. But that's the whole point. If the antags can take out somebody with critical knowledge, that's it, that's decapitation - whatever it was that was getting done no longer gets done, and the rest of the crew has to live with that. If it was a human character who did that, it'd be the exact same thing - I mean, I personally know all kinds of things that my character doesn't know, but if there's a situation that I could fix by exploiting that OOC knowledge, then I just have to sit back and drink in the dramatic irony. That's the whole meat of this discussion. I mean, what's the modus for synthetic knowledge that we're operating under? Do cyborgs know how to do things outside their modules? Could a cyborg with a janitor spec explain to another character how to mix up a phoron bomb, if the player knows how?

I am yet to receive these and it would be appreciated if examples would be posted anytime soon. During a malf round two days ago, cadmus entered chemistry and made anti radiation drugs despite being loaded with a janitor module, and having been such all round.

Ash LaCroix is completely on-point. +1

I'm glad someone else took the initiative on this. Cadmus's vocal behavior is a massive problem, and moreover there's no reason why this behavior would be tolerated - I don't know if Cadmus is supposed to be an MMI or a positronic, but this is a problem that could and would be solved in 30 seconds by improving his law-set. Cadmus, to me, seems like the archetype of the Insufferable Genius, whose usefulness is so tremendous that his terrible behavior is overlooked. The problem is that there's nothing Cadmus does, or at least does legitimately, that is so valuable as to justify putting up with his behavior. I say "legitimately" because, as Wolfwood pointed out, Cadmus frequently breaks out and does things that should be beyond his specialization. Wolfwood mentions seeing Cadmus work chemistry as a research borg; in a previous round two days ago (it was a Malf round) I saw him go in and do it as a janitor borg, just taking it on himself to make some anti-radiation drugs for everyone. I cannot think of a single interaction I have had with Cadmus that has been in any way positive, in the IC or OOC sense. There is simply no reason why a machine would be allowed to behave this way.

I disagree, it wasn't due to an injury at all. He had a lot of experience doing what he did, and then when the odds were against him and his crew, he still managed to survive, if barely. That's the sort of quick thinking that NanoTrasen would value in an engineer, one that can readily adapt to many different situations and still make it out alive, WHILE doing their jobs. But as a quick edit, is that a reason you wouldn't like to see me in Head of Staff positions, specifically? Or is there another reason? I've always played as a competent engineer. I actually have never seen you play, or at least, never seen you do anything notable. I'm just responding to the app as written.

I don't like his backstory. You don't get a high-ranking position as an apology or a condolence-gift because you got hurt, and absent the whole thing about hand cutting, it's just "Ender Octanus got the job as a young man because he was so smart and good at stuff."