FEEDBACK: The Biesel Culture Project

[Caelphon]

Biesel Culture Project

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

The Biesel Culture Project has successfully been merged to the wiki. With it came updates to;

• Government and Politics
• Continents and Cities
• Life on Biesel
• Valkyrie (Biesel's Moon)

What does the playerbase think about these additions? 

Also. More updates will be coming in the future. We are simply laying the foundations. 

 

[greenjoe]

I'm really not a fan of the Top Of The World situation, what with it completely replacing a city and messing up characters who may live in the area.

The idea of the floating city would work better as a whole new location, over the ocean or something, rather then such a radical change to an existing place.

[CatsinHD]

I quite like a lot of the expansion to Biesel and its cities, the one exception being Top of the World for the same reasons listed by Greenjoe. I also find it a bit weird how the government section is in the planet of Biesel page and not the Republic of Biesel page since, from what I can gather, it is the nation's government, not the planetary government (assuming there is even 2 separate governments). However, overall I quite like it, especially the expansion of Valkyrie. My only problems are Top of the World, really.

[Faye <3]

I like most everything about this a lot, I wouldn't mind making a Valyrian now tbh. However, I am not so much a fan of the Top of the World. It's just kind of weird to me? That Miranda basically has a private city that's invite only. 

 

Critique aside, I think this gives a nice facelift to what was one of the most generic locations in our lore! Good stuff.

[Marlon P.]

Very cool additions. What lead to the replacement of Democrats and Republicans and offshoots with the 3 new parties? Was it IC or is this a retroactive change?
The top of the world seems very interesting. Why not combine both ideas of the original with the replies and make it floating? If you're retooling things already, then what if each city had some wild scifi gimmick to make it stand out from the others? Everything else looks great.

[Carver]

I like it a lot. My only critique is, specifically within the section of Top of the World:

Quote

Unfortunately, as of 2450-

The use of unfortunately here comes off as something of a writer's bias. The paragraph otherwise reads quite fine, but this strikes me as though the reader is supposed to see the introduction of the AIumvirate as a bad thing, which after reading though I didn't particularly see it that way at all.

[Caelphon]

Thank you for your feedback on the Biesel Culture Project. The Lore Development Team will begin addressing the issues regarding "Top of the World" as soon as possible. 

On 04/09/2021 at 16:05, William Murdoch said:

I quite like a lot of the expansion to Biesel and its cities, the one exception being Top of the World for the same reasons listed by Greenjoe. I also find it a bit weird how the government section is in the planet of Biesel page and not the Republic of Biesel page since, from what I can gather, it is the nation's government, not the planetary government (assuming there is even 2 separate governments). However, overall I quite like it, especially the expansion of Valkyrie. My only problems are Top of the World, really.

This was done as it includes politics, which will be expanded ON the page, in the near future. 

22 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

Very cool additions. What lead to the replacement of Democrats and Republicans and offshoots with the 3 new parties? Was it IC or is this a retroactive change?
The top of the world seems very interesting. Why not combine both ideas of the original with the replies and make it floating? If you're retooling things already, then what if each city had some wild scifi gimmick to make it stand out from the others? Everything else looks great.

It is considered a retroactive change, so they have "always" been these names but likely shortened and whatnot in the papers. For now, we're likely to keep the distinct themes given to the cities, such as the "southern vibe" from Ashton, or the Elyran Hub of New Marfa. 

22 hours ago, Carver said:

The use of unfortunately here comes off as something of a writer's bias. The paragraph otherwise reads quite fine, but this strikes me as though the reader is supposed to see the introduction of the AIumvirate as a bad thing, which after reading though I didn't particularly see it that way at all.

This will be addressed. 

[greenjoe]

Like I said before. It would be better for Top Of The World to be over the ocean (or really in some area a city wasn't before), rather then completely retconning Lakeside and fucking over everything in the surrounding area.

[Caelphon]

5 minutes ago, greenjoe said:

Like I said before. It would be better for Top Of The World to be over the ocean (or really in some area a city wasn't before), rather then completely retconning Lakeside and fucking over everything in the surrounding area.

Without attempting to sound rude, but I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean? There was no pre-existing lore regarding Lakeside or anything around it?

[greenjoe]

Well, this now makes it so the city is exclusive to the elite of the elite, and affects everything in the surrounding area with its giant tesla.

This kinda really messes with anyone who may have had a character living in or around Lakeside.

Also a giant floating city  in an Earthlike gravity and atmosphere is a bit far fetched, even with future sci fi stuff.

Giving lakeside some lore, rather then such drastic things like this woild be better. Something like a city for the elite of the elite  that messes eith the surrounding area would be better as a new lore location, rather then changing someplace established (even if that place previously lacked lore)

[Kaizr]

I'd like to pre-face this with a note, I love the addition of lore, but I really do have to voice my concerns in regards to Top of the World.

As unique as the idea is for us to have a floating city (which mind you, I have no issue with), I am deeply concerned with the complete 180 we're taking with how we handle lore in Biesel. Aurora has always been a more realistic and reasonable SCI-FI setting, and to suddenly impliment what is essentially Cloud City from Star Wars seems like a sudden change that I find nonsensical for the world we've created here. Especially in Biesel and for it to be over land instead of the ocean. 

However, I can understand people may argue that "Oh, well doesn't Venus have flying cities?", but let's look at this from a scientific point of view. Venus' atmosphere is almost 100x times denser than Earth's, and the gravity is about 91% that of Earth's. If we look at Biesel, we are presented with an exponentially thinner Earth-like atmosphere and gravitational pull. It makes this floating city an almost nonsensical edition to the lore as we're really stretching the limits of our more realistic choice in SCI-FI. Alongside this, I feel it makes little sense to have the city located above a land-mass instead of the ocean due to the fact that it makes the area below uninhabitable. As quoted from the article,

"Powered by a Tesla engine of unprecedented scale, massive lightning strikes sometimes go awry and smash into the shores below, causing storms in nearby geological locations simply from the static electricity vented into the atmosphere."

 

Alongside sounding like something out of a Steampunk/Advanced SCI-FI novel, why would Biesel's government suddenly be willing to sacrifice miles of territory for a private island that they themselves cannot even utilize to some extent (Assuming NT is exploiting Biesel enough to avoid taxation) and in turn destroys the local environment? Alongside this, the removal of Lakeside seems like a drastic change, as pre-existing characters resided there despite the lack of lore. Overall, I feel like this kind of change isn't in line with the lore that preceded it. It would be much more reasonable to have this city located somewhere such as the Eridani Corporate Federation instead of the Republic of Biesel. Or, alternatively, if we are dead-set on having it in Biesel, over the mountains East of the Peterdiezel Crater.

The city will not only be located high above most other locations, but it will then have a prime view over the crater, only adding to the exclusive nature. One would have to climb the metaphorical "Corporate mountain" to reach the city above the mountains. To conclude this, I believe we need to either fully retcon the city or relocate it as I and many others struggle to see how this fits into the lore in it's current state.

[OffRoad99]

The first thing I thought when I read the paragraph about Top of the World, was the Aerium from Altered Carbon: it's pretty much the same thing.
I do not actually mind it, we've known for ages that Biesel is p'much governed in its entirety by NanoTrasen, so the idea of having a flying city with technology we've never seen before (especially in-game) isn't that far-fetched. There's a lot of bleeding-edge technology across the Orion Spur we've likely never heard of: places like the Jargon Federation, Elyra and the Techno-Coalition comes to mind.

Therefore, seeing something that's described as a colossal credits sink, which is completely unsustainable and serves solely as a display of prestige, and all this being financed by the richest and most influential Human in the known universe isn't that...weird, at least to me.
Personally the only thing that strikes me as odd is the timing. This is treated as something that "always existed before, it just has never been mentioned/explored". Wouldn't it be better to see this as a recently-constructed (maybe secret) project, a testament to Miranda's Trasen unparalleled wealth as the CEO of NanoTrasen & the SCC?

[Marlon P.]

I think the scifi technology has it make sense. It's using existing technology. Every other city should have some memorable wonder. It'll draw eyes!

I think the benefits outweigh the costs. When youre breathing life into a planet like this you cant avoid changes that affect backstories. Could you forwardt

people with characters from the city to voice their thoughts here?

 

[Guest]

I'm glad to see Biesel fleshed out, as I feel that it's received next to no love compared to most other worlds and systems in the lore. It's been the generic corpo-state for a good long while now and it's nice to see some more tangible change with it.

 

May not be the place to suggest it, but I'd love to see more changes to the Republic of Biesel overall, seeing how it's annexed a huge swatch of Sol space and is now facing huge changes to its economy thanks to the phoron shortages. More love for Biesel, the better.

[Caelphon]

4 hours ago, moom241 said:

I'm glad to see Biesel fleshed out, as I feel that it's received next to no love compared to most other worlds and systems in the lore. It's been the generic corpo-state for a good long while now and it's nice to see some more tangible change with it.

May not be the place to suggest it, but I'd love to see more changes to the Republic of Biesel overall, seeing how it's annexed a huge swatch of Sol space and is now facing huge changes to its economy thanks to the phoron shortages. More love for Biesel, the better.

This will be coming in the near future!

[Playbahnosh]

Stealing from Star Wars is so 1990's. What is essentially Cloud City, nothing more than an high atmospheric station, which is an engineering and logistical nightmare, not to mention the energy requirements to keep it afloat and supplied, completely unrealistic and untenable. If we wanna have even a bit of realism, either put it out in space or make it a terrestrial city as suggested by most people here. I like the idea of an ocean city, it would make for an interesting setting.

Or, my idea, why not make it a huge space elevator and trade depot? It would make sense cutting cost and time to ferry goods to and from the surface, and being a major trade center it would make sense to have all the corpos and elites live there.

[Caelphon]

Biesel was updated to reflect the criticisms given by those in the thread. 

[greenjoe]

while much better then before, I'm not that keen on Lakeside being a derelict shithole, it could be middle class or something, and still have a big divide compared to the super upper class elite of Top Of the World.

[Alberyk]

Lakeside had no real lore. Its removal or change does not really affect anything besides forcing some people to retcon where their characters lived or change some basic stuff on their background (which I might argue had little to no effect since said place was nothing but a name on a map), with the bonus of now taking the lore in consideration. While we think that players should have a degree of freedom when it comes to their character's backstory, headcanons should not stand on the way of the lore vision.

[Marlon P.]

I think the scifi technology has it make sense. It's using existing technology. Every other city should have some memorable wonder. It'll draw eyes!

I agree with alberyk. When i made the map the cities were just dots. Looking back, making vanilla city dots was a waste of potential. Making them super cool is something that is a benefit even if it does need a few backgrounds lightly edited.

 

Edited September 6, 2021 by Marlon P.

[Carver]

On 06/09/2021 at 05:43, Playbahnosh said:

Stealing from Star Wars is so 1990's. What is essentially Cloud City, nothing more than an high atmospheric station, which is an engineering and logistical nightmare, not to mention the energy requirements to keep it afloat and supplied, completely unrealistic and untenable

Wait hold on what is this argument. Cloud City was a huge mining center for one of the most valued gases in the lore (Tibanna Gas - which the planet Bespin naturally produced an even more valued, highly compacted version of), which happened to be so scenic that Lando managed to make it into an even more profitable resort - all while retaining the pre-existing gas mining. This has nearly nothing in common with Cloud City besides 'oh it floats'.

[WickedCybs]

Few odd things to me to me, chief of which is the existence of "Top Of The World". It just seems very weird to have this Elyiusm-like thing and I view it as the weakest part of the update by far. It honestly just took me out of reading that page because of how out of place it seemed compared to everything else. The recent changes made it a bit better but yeah, it is still rather strange to me. 

Other than that, the way the Economic Freedom Nationals leader is written concerns me too because the page says "Elena de Villiers often stirs up crowds at protests against the megacorporations in a gold mining hard suit. Her allegedly anti-corporate anarchist activities are a matter of rumour." The message I'm getting here is that they are a stereotypical "lower class" charismatic miner that is against the corps and gets involved in anti corporate activity personally. I get it just says allegedly but given the disparity compared to Dorn and Geza-Yaquut in how serious they seem to be, seems that really might be the case? I hope not.

I don't have any real strong thoughts on the rest of the update.