Erik Tiber

I'm just wanting to make clear that I take absolutely no stance with respect to Data's conduct, only that of the doctor. Who really should get an actual thread, I mean this utterly literally, because stuff like that should be made an example of. Also, Jennalene's advice seems rather good. Hostage taking is probably difficult and require careful planning.

I know I am not involved in this matter at all, but I seriously think behavior like that warrants either a character or player complaint. I've observed behavior like that happen many times before (although this is somewhat hypocritical of me)

You could also carry around a tool belt, possibly in your backpack or satchel. Then just deconstruct one of the reinforced walls.

Welderbombs are amazing improvised explosive devices. Most specifically because they cause a hullbreach. They're a lazy-man's C4 charge, essentially. So, I'm just going to bunk up with FFrances' opinion here. They're useful, and any grief done can be stopped easily enough. This. They are useful in gameplay and having it cause a hull breach is far better than either making it only singe people a little bit and cause a shockwave (despite lacking explosive force). We should be careful when deciding whether to remove a feature just because of griefers. These can have legitimate uses for antags,and a non-suicide welder bomb might actually require some creativity. The large griefer bombings did not use welder tanks, they used tank transfer valve bombs constructed in science.

I'd like to note that the senate has only 230 seats and are appointed by the governments of the member states, normally by the legislatures. The Popular Assembly has 5,000 seats, and is directly elected. The Sol Alliance page was recently updated, so you might want to read it again. I noticed several conflicting and confusing aspects of their ideology. For example, authoritarianism and populism are contradictory. Authoritarianism involves little political mobilization of the population, which is basically the opposite of populism. I would appreciate it if you went into more detail about how they rose to power, what aspects of the various cultures they're playing off of, stuff like that. Are they nostalgic for the old days, when the alliance was more dominant? Are they nostalgic for the Earth-dominated First Sol Alliance, and are they nostalgic for Earth itself? What is their stance regarding Alliance policy towards its human neighbors, what specific policies does it advocate with regards to the different species? What is their stance on economic issues, like the Tau Ceti FTZ? Do they want increased federal power or less? Who are their supporters, and from what cultural background primarily? Is this a coalition of a number of different anti-alien parties? Did they have any connections to the old 'Sol' party, and do they have any to the current 'Oath' party coalition? Are they part of the government or are they part of the opposition? Please try to make these sorts of thing clear. Even if the party does /not/ have a stance on an issue, that is important to know.

I'm just here to comment on these bits of the backstory. I'm mildly worried by this, as this basically gives him knowledge about antagonists, which you are not supposed to have. I would also like to point you towards this. http://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Misconceptions Most antag actions are not canon on this server.

Just because I don't want my only contribution to be on a matter I know nothing about, I am somewhat worried by these bolded portions. I'm not sure, but I think a head should be willing to help out new players, let them feel welcome, and try to act as a mentor. When you use terms like 'transcend the great tide' and 'above the average player' I get the feeling that you would not be the most understanding mentor to new players. I find it especially patronizing when you state that heads are the ones who must entertain 'those who have not or can not transcend above average player'. In my opinion, I'd like it if a head were to provide an example for other players in order to help them improve their own roleplay, without looking down on them or patronizing them. I also find it way easier to work with people who are open to criticism. I personally think presenting newcomers with a welcoming atmosphere is very important.

The purpose of the game isn't to crush the antags, or level the station. It's to construct a fun roleplay environment. Personally, I would like to see the station brought to its knees more often. Those are fun rounds. Agreed. It is so satisfying to try to survive within a dying station while everything falls apart around you. I would especially like a round where the cult becomes strong enough to actually operate in the open and let all hell break loose. If the round starts resembling Event Horizon, then it is definitely a good round.

Er, as someone who has no idea who you are, I am worried by your reluctance to admit fault and what is quite frankly a persecution complex. Characters who go up against heavily armed opponents with little regard for their safety are also something of a bugbear of mine. Although it did happen on Flight 97, the passengers far more heavily outnumbered the hijackers and the hijackers were not as heavily armed. The majority of times I see it happen it's simply out of place.

Eh, I don't think it would. Most people who want to powergame would do so already and wouldn't need this excuse. We can just say that the smart gun won't help them if they don't even have any training with firearms. They might not be used to the gun balancing itself. They might not know how to turn on aim assist. For laser weaponry (including energy guns on kill), they'd probably be firing the weapon without proper eye protection that could make them start seeing spots, or might hold it incorrectly and burn themselves.

Thank you for explaining.

We still have shrapnel from gunshots. I do figure that this would be a bit hard to code, however, and it does seem like more trouble than it is worth. EDIT 2: I edited out my quote of Sue. I'd revert it if I could.

So I recently read a bit about lung injuries and blast injuries. Then I read Kane's "Grenade" thread and thought to myself, "Wait, brute brain damage represents a concussion. So why don't explosions cause concussions?" Then I realized that there are several other effects missing as well. If an explosion is powerful enough, the over pressure can cause your lungs to collapse. Flying debris can get into unprotected eyes. TL; DR My suggestion is as follows: Have explosions inflict a few extra injuries. The new effects would include: Random chance of brute eye damage as well as having shrapnel embedded in the eye, which would show up as [foreign object detected] on the full-body scanner. This could be fixed using eye surgery. This would b accompanied by the message "You can feel something inside your eye!" If you are directly next to them and examine them, you would see the message "You think you can see something in their eye." Random chance of flying shrapnel embedding in limbs, chest, groin, or head. Similar to how bullets work. Collapsed lung if the victim is sufficiently close to a sufficiently large explosion. They could recieve a concussion, shown with brute damage to the brain, dependent on distance.

I'm not sure if it should result in them gibbing. Maybe there could be a chance of it. I think it'd be better if it just gave them major damage to all organs, brute brain damage, internal bleeding in the chest, and shattered ribs.

Wait Vincent was with Tina? Edit: You know, this would be the perfect chart to model the spread of STD's throughout the station.

+1, I am frankly intimidated by the amount of writing Rech has done for this role.

Throwing out hardcoded miss chances can also be easily justified as reflecting the futuristic nature of the setting. Simply state that the various firearms are smartguns, with gyroscopes inside them which stabilize the gun's aim. All the guns (except bartender's shotgun obviously) could be gyrostabilized, meaning that the weapon doesn't shoot at where the gun is pointed at the instance of firing, but rather at the weighted average of where it has been pointing for the past quarter of a second. I have no idea what sight would go well with a taser, because its ergonomics are different from a rifle so a reflex sight would probably not work (can a gun expert correct me if I'm wrong?). However, for weapons like the energy carbines and laser rifle, the weapon could also come with a reflex sight, and lasers such as the energy carbine's kill mode and the laser rifle could also come with adaoptive-optic mirrors that let the gun automatically adjust the angle of the beam by one or two degrees, further stabilizing the gun. The location of the reticule on the sight would take into account this adjustment and would thus also be stabilized, making it much easier to use the sight by reducing jitter. When I read about that idea, it seemed like a nice little detail to add in. Of course this would just boil down to "Its Assisted Aiming System helps steady the gun and can slightly adjust the angle of the beam of the gun for increased accuracy" because nobody really cares about the details.

I am unsure of what grounds you are objecting on. Do you mean that, regardless of whether or not 230 is realistic, we would have to change daily life enough that it could screw up some character's backstories? Or are you stating that it is unrealistic, and that my argument is not anymore convincing just because I got a bunch of low quality sources? I can not really respond to your post, because I do not know what you are saying. Did my tone come off as hostile? If so, I will keep that in mind. I know I can be very stubborn.

Well this prompted me to spend a few hours skimming/reading various articles on the subject (yes mainly Wikipedia, though I did check several articles on the Atlantic and NatGeo, and I made sure to check the citations in the Wiki articles), and in the progress I came up with a few new ideas for surgeries. But that's not for this thread. There are several species of biologically immortal bacteria and some other microorganisms. Wear and tear occurs, but entropy probably shouldn't be relevant. After all, the defining feature of living things is that they aren't closed systems. They take in energy whenever they eat, and they release waste too. I think it may be more productive to discuss death in a different context. I don't doubt that there are hard limits to this immortality, but I don't think entropy is it. I may be missing something though. Are you using it as an analogy for gradual wear and tear? Yes, this is why the lifespan is not infinite. In this setting, you can clone organs or give people prosthetic replacements. Organs will inevitably fail, yes, but when they do they can be replaced with new, healthy organs. It would not be too far-fetched for scientists to find a way to stave off senility, at least for a while. The oldest woman to ever live died at the age of 122, and she never went senile, so it's certainly possible for people to remain lucid for absurd periods of time. In-game doctors can repair brain damage from imperfect cloning and physical trauma; a drug to treat Alzheimer's does not seem all that far fetched this far into the future. This neural damage can also be slowed in the first place. Genetic engineering is well within the realm of possibility, and scientists have already identified genes which can reduce the occurrence of Alzheimer's and heart disease. Given a few extra centuries of research into genetic engineering, and I think people will be able to significantly delay the onset of senility. Telomere shortening can be bypassed by increasing the body's production of telomerase. Mice who were engineered to produce ten times as much telomerase ended up living 50% longer, so it is theoretically possible if I'm reading this right. Although this would increase cancer risk, this far into the future cancer treatments should be far more advanced. Cloned replacement organs should be able to last for quite a while. Genetic engineering could probably help increase the longevity of various internal organs too. Do note that I'm a freshman economics major, so I ain't exactly an expert here. I'll try to keep that in mind if someone more qualified than I comes in. I'd think that they'd have mandatory genetic engineering pre-birth in most major states, it could be treated like vaccinations. Based on my own not-considerable knowledge, they should probably be able to improve longevity through, I dunno, giving people stronger hearts and such, improving general health, improving immune systems. Transplants could be semi-common, and could be used to explain the prevalence of smoking this far into the future, since a lung cancer diagnosis might be treated more like a broken bone than a life-threatening illness. I'd like to amend my aging suggestion, by the way. Rather than specifying 'young adult', 'middle age' and all that, it'd probably be better for me to define 'health span' and 'life span', with health span measuring the age at which they are no longer capable of intensive physical activity, like working as a construction worker. It'd basically be the point where your character has absolutely no business working as a security officer or engineer.

I'd like to provide a bit of additional input. While I think a colony such as this would be out of place among, say, the middle colonies, by placing it in the outer colonies, I find it to be much more fitting. This could simply be a world of a few ten million, one of several dozen of its kind in the outer colonies. Religious/ethnic conflicts such as these could simply be just one of the many problems faced by many newer colonies on the fringes of human space, just like corruption or political violence. It would simply be an 'outer colonies problem' rather than one of the primary drivers of conflict within human space. Do note, however, that there would likely be distinct subcultures, even if they have experienced heavy influence from foreign cultures. Instead, you might get a number of different cultures descending from a single modern one. For example, there might be a number of cultures which are clearly descended from modern day Russia, but comparing two of these cultures would be like comparing, say, two Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. They are both clearly descended from a common culture, but they can show significant differences as well.

This will be in the upcomming update Can I hug you? This may be a good idea. As of now I just assume all scientists have a doctorate. It'd be nice not having to guess based on someone's age and occupation though.

Character creation is one of the integral parts of the game. Along with appearance, it also lets you choose a number of features which have no effect on gameplay, such as age and skills, but which can still be central to your character and their backstory. On several servers, I noticed additional features on the character creation page, such as 'system of origin', 'faction', and 'religion'. I believe that by adding these features, it will be easier for new players to be introduced to the lore, and help maintain a cohesive setting. On a different note, I'd also like to see modification to the 'age' function, and a slight tweaking of skills to ensure that people don't make security medical engineers. My suggestions are as follows: 1. Include 'home world' and 'faction' options on the character creation page. The player first chooses their character's polity country of origin. These can include the major named nations, as well as a few generic options(IE "Independent Middle Colony", "Independent Outer Colony", and "Independent Frontier Colony"). Then the player would choose the home world (or equivalent) for their character. The list of home worlds would vary based on what faction the player chose. If they chose "Sol Alliance", then they would see a list of the largest dozen or so worlds in the Sol Alliance, as well as an option for a fill-in-the-blank minor world. Other factions would have fewer home worlds on the list, and some may lack a fill-in-the-blank option if they are one of the smaller factions. If the player had chosen 'Independent [Middle/Outer/Frontier] Colony" for faction, they would see a list of the most populous Independent colonies in that category, as well as a fill-in-the-blank option. For example, if a player chose Independent Middle Colony for faction, in the home world bar they would see a list of the largest worlds which are not part of any of the listed factions. 2. Include 'religion' to the character creation page. This is an option I have seen on several servers and it seems useful. The options could include Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, (Popular Tajaran Religion), (Popular Unathi Religion), (Popular Skrell Religion), Other (fill-in-the-blank), Agnosticism, Deism, Non-religious. 3. Increase maximum character age and adjust the skill system to compensate for this. I have discussed increasing character age numerous times, though never got around to officially suggesting it on the forums. The main objection I saw was that it would allow people to abuse the skill system. Thus, this could be accompanied to a change in that system. As of now, a character aged 30-59 gets 4 'bonus points' to their skills and a character aged 60-85 gets 10 bonus points. Under the new system, characters aged 30 could get 4 bonus points, characters aged 60 could get 8, characters aged 120 could get 12 bonus points, and characters aged 180 could get 15 bonus points. With futuristic medicine, it is only natural that the average lifespan would increase. It should be interesting for players to explore the potential interactions between coworkers when several of them are older than most of the colonies in human space. This is the exact reason we have aliens; so players can explore, well, alien perspectives. Looking at the alien perspectives of a future human society should be especially interesting, as they are both familiar and strange at the same time. I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations and made a rough guide to give players an idea of their character's apparent age. In the below table, I indicate the st Inner Colonies: 20, 90, 160, 230 Mid Colonies: 20, 80, 140, 200 Outer Colonies: 20, 70, 120, 170 Frontier Colonies: 20, 60, 110, 140 The first number is the start of "Young adulthood", the second number is the start of "middle age", the third number is the start of "old age" when characters will start to retire or assume less labor-intensive tasks, and the fourth number represents "advanced age" when the person is no longer capable of independently functioning. These ages vary depending upon what region of space you are in. Someone from the frontier may seem much older than someone from the inner colonies of the same age. As a general note, the median age is roughly 90 years old.

1.)NEU is better (I was exhausted when I made the name so this is noted.) Plus it's new in German. 2.)It's one system among a hundred Billion, large is not the word for it. There's several thousand inhabited systems of note. There's fewer systems with pops over a few million. Any star system with hundreds of millions or more is a major population center. But why kingdoms?

I'd be totally fine with this if it weren't for the bullet casings and teeth on the jacket.

Thanks, I know what Lockie's going to ask her about next time they talk.