Give Skrell Sol Common

[mwhit030]

This is a direct quote from the wiki on Ceti Basic. (https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Languages)

"A Spiritual successor to Esperanto, established in 2404 in Tau Ceti by Tau Ceti intellectuals. Its unique fully customized alphabet and structure allow it to be spoken even by most alien races."

Skrell weren't discovered by humans until 2413, so it was not made with the purpose to accommodate for xeno speaking mannerisms, rather that it just happens to work for them, kinda. So my guess is that because Ceti Basic is an artificial language, where it was probably built to be learned easily as a second language, it's easier for xenos to learn it as opposed to Sol Common?

 

Or it could be just that I'm insane and I'm worrying too much about how space furries can speak a fictional language.

 

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I am leaning on arrows statement, and the cochlear implant. It may be beneficial to give them a rate of understanding one another languages such as azaziba and sintaunathi, or create an implant that both sides can use to understand the other language perfectly.

 

We do not need to explicitly wait for a humandev. Whenever there is a vacancy it defaults back to the loremaster (me) and mofo (who is overseeing human apps)

Edited December 18, 2018 by Marlon Phoenix

[Flamingo]

I’d personally like to see an expansion of our prosthetic and implant system. It would be neat to have implants for understanding languages and such. Imagine getting hit by an EMP as a human who knows skrell language, and it fries your cochlear implant and voice modulator, and you suddenly just can’t understand/vocalize some of the sounds?

[furrycactus]

Adding onto what Flam has said, Polaris has special voice synthesizer implants available in the loadout for certain languages. Characters there are able to understand certain languages, like EAL or Skrellian (which is what they are called there; and please for the love of god don't derail this into a discussion about EAL being learnable) as long as it's in their selection, but they are unable to speak it in turn without a vocal synthesizer for the specific language, which is on the more expensive side of loadout points.

Given the xenophilic nature of Skrell, and that they specialise in the area of implants, it could be possible that in attempts to foster closer relations, Skrell and Humans began work together on language synthesisers for each other's languages.

By default, if selected in the loadout, Humans could understand perhaps 65% of Nral'Malic but not be able to speak it, given the unique biology needed. Skrell could start out being able to understand Sol Common (my first instinct would be to say 100% only because I don't think Sol Common has entirely inaudible elements to it towards the Skrell, otherwise 65% works for balance too) but also not able to speak it. If Humans want to speak the Skrell language, they'd need to select a vocal synthesiser in the loadout for said language, and I would say it should be an expensive thing, like 4-5 points, and it also allows them proper understanding of the language too. Same for the Skrell, take the expensive loadout implant, full ability to speak and understand Sol Common.

Just a thought.

[Warbidon]

I would support Flamingos implementation of it, as this would prevent people from hitting three buttons and knowing SOl-COmm without any real backstory reason why. It also supports  Conspiir's discussion of how a language isn't an object to be owned, but a collective resource. perhaps its a little difficult for one species to gain access to it than another, but it should still be possible. 

It keeps the "house" relatively clean of alien speakers while still allowing a chance for one or two fo them to pop up.

[Conspiir]

Cochlear implants would be really neat. If we make it an expensive loadout item, though, we have to take into account it would logically go on the earslot. Skrell often wear headtail dressings on their earslot. Not to mention it would screw anyone that wears neck bandanas or headphones. The code would have to be in such a way that things could attach to the cochlear implant, but the cochlear implant could also not just be taken off willy-nilly and would be straight-up attached on spawn.

 

The best way, I think, would be prosthesis. But then it's "free" so what's preventing people from doing the same thing you say they'd do if it were a language slot?

[furrycactus]

If implants could be properly coded in for the loadout (not just for this, but also for general implants for skrell, and even vaurca too), instead of being additional organs, that'd be neat. But obviously, take this with a whole bag of salt, because I have no idea how hard that actually would be to code.

[Arrow768]

Closing the associated PR as each species should have it´s own unique language that can not be used by other species unless they acquire some kind of device that allows them to understand this language.
Naturally such a device should be rather expensive and uncommon.

The preferred option to implement this would be the aforementioned implants.

An acceptable alternative would be to create a intermediate language between sol common and skrell which would grant a partial understanding of sol / skrell if learned by skrell / humans. (Like we have with SiikTau).

Feel free to reopen / recreate the PR once either of these options has been implemented.

[Snakebittenn]

Implants are cool, but humans should not be able to understand more than like 10% of Skrellian. Plus, as we've seen with Siik'tau, it would make Skrell players extremely uncomfortable.

[Arrow768]

The associated pr has been closed and the branch deleted by the author.

Therefore moving it to the archive