Synthlore revival arc announcement/feedback thread

[kyres1]

Synthlore Revival Mini-event Arc

This is an announcement with basic details for a soon-to-be-finished and now presentable synthetic lore arc that focuses directly on IPCs without taking the spotlight from other species, giving us escalation to make swaying narrative decisions and ultimately fulfill some things the community has wanted for some time now with actual in-character buildup. Whether you want this is up to you to decide - this is both a feedback thread and an announcement all the same, so if you would rather your voice be heard, here’s the place to do it.

Right now there’s around 8 volunteers already chosen to take on special lore roles in the arc. During the arc, IC roles will open up granting access to the coordination discord upon joining, allowing for OOC notifications when events start including event character information required to participate. Unrelated or one-off roles will have their volunteers sought out by the lore team directly, most likely.

Backdrop, ICly

The Synthetic Liberation Front is back, and there’s a new flavor of Solarians out to get them - Ceres’ Lance, a PMC whose specialty lies in putting down the uprise of rogue synthetics once and for all. NanoTrasen has finally bought the Lance’s favor, and thus begins what is hopefully the last back and forth fight to settle synthetic terrorism across the system.

The Aurora has become the target of the SLF for whatever reason, though not for outright hostilities. In fact, they’ve toned down their act significantly, and work in the shadows. It’s up to the Aurora’s very crew to determine why they’re here.

Backdrop, OOCly

This arc will essentially amount to a ton of mini-events that have the potential for escalation, and in the end leave us with some newly refined concepts that will be touched over near the end of this post. During the arc, volunteers playing Ceres’ Lance operatives will act as OOC and IC informants and suppliers to the crew as a whole and work in tandem with security at times to ensure involvement with as much of the crew as possible. Meanwhile, the Synthetic Liberation Front will bolster its numbers through IC participation and recruitment, carrying out random goals as the arc progresses with some mysterious, veiled intent.

In essence, it will be player characters who will spearhead much of the arc to build what we need with pre-selected volunteers acting as supporting factors to help the rounds progress or escalate.

What it’ll amount to, in character/mechanically

Several concepts are being tossed around as occurring during or near the end of the mini-events. These are as follows and are entirely subject to change, especially considering community feedback as factor :

Definitely lessening the value of incident reports made by non-command IPCs.

Removing SIM in its current iteration and replacing it with something superior, more unique, and less political.

Moving positronics from being made in R&D and robotics, and making them orderable via cargo for cheap. (Done i think)

Removal of security cyborgs.

What it’ll amount to, narratively

Mostly provided, narratively, is needed escalation for events of importance to actually occur again relating to synthetics. Synthlore has been dead for quite some time and kicking it back into gear with this is rather trivial in practice, though it did take a long time to prepare. Also -

Bubble’s canonization app was recently approved, so this gives us some extra IC incentive to work with to integrate Bubble ingame. (Actually done)

Is there a win/loss scenario for the factions participating?

No. Rather than force a decision that we will regret 2 years down the line, we’ll use our better judgement in accordance to however the arc goes to provide fulfillment to players in a refined manner. This, in my mind, is vastly superior to presenting win conditions and saying “tough luck haha” to the folks who were vehemently against their opposition winning, OOCly.

In summary

The arc itself is pretty small in the grand scheme of things. The vast majority of events that occur on station will directly affect the characters involved and those around them without becoming the center of focus for all of lore, giving others plenty of spotlight to work in while synthlore remains active with those interested in the arc itself. A grand total of 3-4 news posts will occur as well as a final one which will permit the events to run as long as we deem necessary for escalation or de-escalation of what will happen.

All events will be logged on the calendar, even the tiniest ones. The vast majority of them will be ran on secret optionally.

Further information can be found below on the participating factions in the arc.

https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Synthetic_Liberation_Front

https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Ceres'_Lance

https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Rudatek

Edited August 17, 2019 by kyres1

[Sytic]

Huh, neat. Looking forward to it. Excited!

[MoondancerPony]

Quote

Potentially lessening the value of incident reports made by IPCs.

Potentially implementing head of staff requirements for IPCs to be free and have a set amount of training relevant to whatever field they intend to pursue, rather than the current idea of robots being “manufactured to take up head of staff roles.”

These two seem pretty contradictory. I also feel like they'll make playing IPCs even more of a drag than they already are.

I could see a more moderate version of the former, i.e. an IPC janitor complaining about harassment would be ignored, while an IPC head of staff filing a complaint over serious work misconduct would not be. (However, I feel like CCIA needs to do that more often in general.)

The latter just arbitrarily restricts character concepts. For example, the idea of a brand-new CMO IPC with all the theoretical knowledge being tossed into the fray and having to deal with the complexities of actually working with patients sounds like an interesting avenue for character development. They'd still be able to do their job, but they'd have some room to grow and possibly even encounter mild conflict, i.e. having to develop proper bedside manner or management. Yes, they'd have basic theoretical knowledge, but the difference between theory and application is big enough to make this worth keeping.

[kyres1]

3 minutes ago, MoondancerPony said:

I could see a more moderate version of the former, i.e. an IPC janitor complaining about harassment would be ignored, while an IPC head of staff filing a complaint over serious work misconduct would not be. (However, I feel like CCIA needs to do that more often in general.)

This can certainly be done and works to accomplish precisely what we need.

5 minutes ago, MoondancerPony said:

The latter just arbitrarily restricts character concepts. For example, the idea of a brand-new CMO IPC with all the theoretical knowledge being tossed into the fray and having to deal with the complexities of actually working with patients sounds like an interesting avenue for character development. They'd still be able to do their job, but they'd have some room to grow and possibly even encounter mild conflict, i.e. having to develop proper bedside manner or management. Yes, they'd have basic theoretical knowledge, but the difference between theory and application is big enough to make this worth keeping. 

A fair counterpoint, giving me more reason to rework this idea. I'll ping you first from here when the post is edited to conform to a better one.

 

[Nekonyan123]

7 hours ago, kyres1 said:

Removal of security cyborgs.

This is my main concern regarding this... security cyborgs are fairly useful and can provide helpful hints to ISD serving as a relay from the department to the AI.

I mean, I do not see why security cyborgs would deserve to be removed, the point of cyborgs is that they can fulfill almost any role inside the station as needed.

Spoiler

Also my cyborg char is a sec main pls do not remove them ❤️

 

Other than that, I like the idea of a development regarding synthetic issue, and look forward to partake in those events.

[GreenBoi]

2 hours ago, Nekonyan123 said:

This is my main concern regarding this... security cyborgs are fairly useful and can provide helpful hints to ISD serving as a relay from the department to the AI.

 

This has already been discussed in another forum.

[kyres1]

The effects of the arc have been updated according to the feedback here and new effects have been posted, though they aren't exactly as impactful.

[kyres1]

The effects of the arc have been updated once more to include the potential removal of the "Android" alt-title for cyborgs.

[GreenBoi]

Wait, why is Android being removed from the alt-title section?

[kyres1]

On 01/08/2019 at 13:17, GreenBoi said:

Wait, why is Android being removed from the alt-title section?

Generally speaking this will be changed to a soft retcon I guess because we have nO IDEA HOW TO DO IT ICLY in a way that makes sense, after long debate.

But -

OOCly speaking, Android is being removed from the alt-title section for two separate reasons :

1. It is an attempt to lower the complications with IPCs becoming "free," OOCly, by removing an additional nonsensical feature that can hardly be justified in character

2. It is an attempt to completely stop the flow of IPC characters being "integrated" from stationbounds.

Nobody is having their backstory rewritten from this, but the in-character justification for these changes is not something to balance out the OOC justifications as it stands. Regardless, this makes it unrelated to the arc, but will still be something it amounts to in the end.

[kyres1]

The addition of removing android alt-titles has been removed due to backlash in the proposal.

As well, security borgs will probably not be "reworked" or given an "alternative module." They are still awaiting removal, though the person responsible for the PR will be away until this saturday I think? Further discussion on the subject is redundant honestly as the points have already been made and I do not intend to spam the four(four!) rework threads with them, so I will pile them together right here as this is the primary thread leading to their removal.

1. Laws.

To expand upon this point, laws both make no sense when dealing with crew antags and drill a validhunting mindset into your head. There is no maybes or ifs in this reality - the laws literally enforce keeping the facility secure to the best of your ability and repelling threats with utter impunity. As for crew antagonists, it's very difficult to rationalize stunbatoning NanoTrasen personnel you're meant to serve. It inflicts extreme pain and administers a paralyzing shock that could easily be seen as lethal force. This leads you to believe the security module is built to repel boarders - and, if boarders are the expectation, why not give it the necessary powerful armament to decimate any opposition?

TL;DR, the module is difficult to rationalize existing ICly in its current state especially given laws. The laws as well force the players to crush opposition with their tools.

2. The tools.

To expand upon this as well, the tools are fucking overpowered. You get a stunbaton which is dependent on your cell for charge, basically giving it several dozen whacks worth of juicy instant-paralysis that can disarm, disable and/or kill anyone you'd like - even if it's unable to kill, the fact that you're being hit with a stunbaton in of itself and probably being surrounded by officers and being totally unable to do anything about it short of overwhelming firepower/EMP/flash is enough to consider this ridiculous. A primary disadvantage of stunbatons is the ability to disarm them and use them against the caveman security officer presently beating you. A borg can not be disarmed, grabbed, pushed, paralyzed, have their hands broken, fall into crit, etc, making their capacity for stunbatoning you even that more absurd.

To even further continue, no, the taser is not trash - even if you don't just target hands, it should still slow even a hardsuited person down enough for you to catch up and firmly apply a baton to the face of.

TL;DR Stunbatons are crazy. Stunbatons are crazier when they don't run out of charge, and you can't feasibly stop them from hitting you without 3 specific counters.

3. The borgs themselves.

As said before, borgs have huge advantages over humanoids. You are unable to push them (even warforms can't actually push them off a tile, making them an invulnerable wall if you get pinned in a corner), either with disarm intent or otherwise. You are unable to punch them. You are unable to disarm them. You are unable to gas them, stun them, suffocate them, poison them, inflict any sort of pain upon them, the list is very, very long here. They are fundamentally an extremely imbalanced and niche-countered gameplay factor. Thus, we should seek to remove them from round-by-round conflict, which security borgs are often the center of.

Was the same argument had for combat borgs? No, it wasn't, because combat borgs were stupid in more ways than just being overpowered. They're a different story.

TL;DR Borgs as mobs are not good for combat because of their inherent power. Why would anybody in their right mind give them buffs in combat outside of special roles (malf?)

With all this said, yeah they should be getting removed. Seriously, they do not need a replacement, either. If you need reasoning why, please read above. While I am a big supporter of a "rework not remove" mindset, which was the original reason I pursued just getting Peacekeepers tied in with Bygone's Peacekeeper lore arc, I've come to learn that everyone and their mother has ideas on how to improve this. This broken feature should be removed until those improvements come.

[Scheveningen]

4 hours ago, kyres1 said:

The addition of removing android alt-titles has been removed due to backlash in the proposal.

Well that's dumb. Shouldn't posibrains be exclusive to IPCs to start with? There's also a PR up to remove posibrains from science. We can supplement these issues and allow it to go through by also allowing RND or robotics to produce the robot control circuits.