The Einstein ship, and how to fix it.

[AccointNaim]

The EERV is fundamentally flawed as a ship, indirectly and directly telling you to be antagonistic with the Horizon by use of spying and infiltration with the use of the locker full of disguises and the tooltip telling you to investigate and spy on the Horizon.

The description of the Einstein crew says as follows: "Crew the Einstein Engines research (or more accurately, spy) ship. Collect intelligence on the SCCV Horizon, all while maintaining plausible deniability. NOT AN ANTAGONIST! Do not act as such."

Despite telling you not to act as an antagonist, it implies you need to spy on the Horizon with the use of the disguise closet and infiltration suits, and so the players joining as them act as intended. The first round Einstein was in the hangar blew up, the second round the Captain executed two of the Einstein crewmen, and many other rounds the crew attempted to infiltrate the Horizon to snap pictures or disguise as employees to gain information.

I really think Einstein could be a great away ship, with a major megacorporation that doesn't get much in-game representation, and the little representation they do have is antagonist gear, making them in the eyes of the average player as basically just the Syndicate. The way to fix the Einstein ship is to remove the disguise closet, rename or replace the infiltration suits, reworking the description into a research ship instead of a spy ship and allowing them to have canon interactions with the crew.

Edited April 20, 2022 by AccointNaim

[YourDaddy117]

Third party ships, to me, are going to be very important to getting the server to a place where RP can be more organically introduced than just through characters reacting to funny antags. Naturally there's going to be some problems, controversy, or whatever due to the fact we haven't had anything like this on the server before outside of the kind of limited away sites back on the Aurora map. 

This is all to say that I don't think EE being a "soft-antag" ship is a bad idea, but it just needs clear boundaries. Because having more variety in the ship/character interactions brings about higher quality RP means we kind of need roles that work against the Horizon and the crew. Part of the problem is that because this is super early into the Horizon's life we don't have any real away sites, so all of the third party ship's have to go to the ship to get any real RP. Once we have cooler, larger away sites I believe the third-party ships will be able to create cooler situations by virtue of them just coincidentally  heading for the same place and wanting the same things. 

They can work as both an actual research ship and also a "spy on the Horizon" ship, but "Spying on the Horizon" needs clearer boundaries for both sides. EE shouldn't be murdering folks or anything like that, but the crew also shouldn't be doing bad faith stuff when they clearly know OOC that these unknowns are EE spies. 

[WickedCybs]

I believe the only fix is waiting for the overmap to get more content and re-introducing it at a later time if wanted. Even if you removed the spy aspect to the ship, the Horizon still has no reason to interact with them and EE shouldn't really be trying to talk to them either. You will not get the "canon" interactions you want out of it  So the roleplay would have to have happen at overmap sites, between the away teams from each side. Is my thought.

Alternatively the ship could spawn on antag game modes only and once a proper framework for hostile third parties is added, empower them to do some stuff.

[Garnascus]

The EE ship is really neat and a genuinely fresh idea that gives players a reason to be invested in other megacorp lore. I think it just has some growing pains and i would hate to see such an interesting idea wasted. Like others have said we just need clear boundaries on what they are and are not allowed to do. That is a meaningful discussion. What is not a meaningful discussion is whether or not they are antags. Outside of the fancy powers and guns antagonists are equipped with there is only one meaningful difference between a regular crewmember and an antagonist. The antagonist is permitted to presuppose a reason to fuck someone or somethings day up. They are allowed to start the shift with the goal of doing something nefarious. That's it. That is the only difference. Following this logic the EE crew are antagonists. I think we should embrace this and move on to a discussion on what they are allowed to do and how often they should show up. As an example here are some rough guidelines on what i reckon would be healthy objectives for the EE crew

- Charting the course of the horizon through sectors

- Monitoring radio comms for intelligence

- Snapping photos of the outside of the horizon

The goal here being acting as an antagonist but in a cursory way. A "Soft-antag" for those love that labels. Encourage and incentivize the EE crew to gather intelligence, observe and report back to their leadership. Lets contrast this with a list of things the EE should NEVER do.

- Kidnap crew of the horizon

- Break and enter into the horizon

- Steal items from the horizon

- Bomb the horizon

The list goes on and on. The EE ship is not a merc team and should not act like one. Keep in mind the specific "objectives" on both of these lists are not super important. The idea is simply being stealthy is good, being loud is bad. We probably do not want the EE ship taking over rounds. It may even be a good idea to add "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO LAND ON THE HORIZON".

 

Also, probably dont cite anything i have written here as "The law". This is an ongoing discussion with no solid conclusions yet. 

[Peppermint]

I feel we should keep them as antags, honestly. We didn't have that many issues when we had burgalar occasionally spawning outside of when it was supposed to. Allowing them to play as EE spies doing whatever, imo at least, would make things more interesting and add more stakes to rounds. Just give them limited arms and make the spawn rate really, really low - removing hostile ships and whatnot is just going to lead to things like the TCFL one, which people have already stopped using. Likewise being too limited on what the spies can do such as only taking pictures and whatnot sounds really boring and nobody will use it.

I think they should be kept in, but told they have to stick to their role. Perhaps a disclosure to run overly hostile stuff by staff or something before going hard. I'd personally be fine with keeping them canonical, but can understand if people would prefer they get the away site treatment instead. Seems wasted potential to do much else.

[ben10083]

I think its fine for a EE guy to try to sneak into the Horizon and snap some pictures (like perhaps they want to see how the engines work for example), but they should overall try to avoid being detected and drawing too much attention. I can also see it valid of just them hanging out outside the horizon, taking some images of the vessel.

[Granodd]

I think it's completely fine with there being some ships in the sector which are straight up just "provocateurs", in that the interactions with them could either be an uneasy neutrality, or hostile interaction. From the times that I've played on servers with roles like that it felt genuinely interesting and made the sector feel a bit more alive to have ships who you know are likely going to become unfriendly if you say or do the wrong things.

I think the whole concept of the overmap and third party ships is just extremely new and in its early phases, so there's going to be a bit of issue with how things go until more content is introduced for all of the ships to interact with, like the away sites and such.

But above all I think the ideal end goal for the overmap and third party ship development is to have a healthy selection of ships, as well as away sites to interact with and contest over, while also keeping normal round antags involved which may even give some of the third party ships either an opportunity to do something, or to try and help the Horizon. And I do think among those selections of ships, some should lean towards the hostile side as to provide a sense of credible danger while traversing open space.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

I feel like this ship should be treated the same way that the burglar pod was treated on the Aurora. 

EE is antagonistic for the SCC in nature. We had an entire "arc" that involved them and their actions on station. From boarding and projecting major power with their asset protection/bullying NanoTrasen, to winning some really "big wig" court case about the engines, to even having operatives board and sabotage the station/shoot some crew. 

The ship should be treated as "soft antags". They open up, are given the same expectations as the burglar pod is, and set free to do whatever a spy ship would do. 

[icedcabbage]

I think there is already a solution to the Einstein ship in its flavor text. It is a Research Ship, all we have to do is lean more heavily into that fact. Add a Xenoarchaeology/Anomaly Lab and its related equipment to the EE ship. This would create organic interactions between miners/researchers of the Horizon and the Research crew on the EE ship.

Additionally I think giving them a way to tap into the Horizon's comms to passively spy on them makes sense. This would also give them the ability to leverage their way aboard if Researchers are needed. Say a strange mind controlling parasite appears on the Horizon.

Edited April 20, 2022 by icedcabbage

[Kintsugi]

As I mentioned in discord last night, EE will never be a faction that can logically interact with the Horizon in anything but an unfriendly way, with the present lore in mind. It just doesn't work and every scenario presented to me so far has a logical rebuttal. Now adding a third party ship that is supposed to never interact with the Horizon is stupid; it doesn't generate interesting roleplay. Here's what I think:

Quote

I think there should be two categories for unfriendly/hostile ships. "Unfriendly" and "Antagonist". Unfriendly has some leeway to cause conflict but isn't supposed to be outright shooting hostile by default - it would have some room for canonical interactions. "Antagonist" would be stuff that would attack the Horizon.

This is what I propose. That way EE would be able to exist and exist logically, while also allowing canonical interactions.

[Oddbomber]

I'd like to begin by saying that my opinion is heavily influenced by my experience playing on Bay, which had a wandering enemy vessel or two in the form of the Ascent or whatever they were called. 

I really, really love the idea of a spy-ship disguised as a research vessel. That kinda cloak and dagger stuff is especially fun to play, in my opinion. Adding onto the other statements on being "soft antags", I fully agree with the sentiment that it's similar in premise to the burglar pod - which worked well, and occasionally spiced up rounds. The EEV doesn't really have the weaponry to practically act as an openly hostile force, nor are they given access to antag equipment. Instead, they get stuff like disguise closets and crates of random stuff, along with a suppressed pistol. This is to say, they're clearly geared for covert operations outside of their ship. It doesn't make sense for them to be blocked from doing so.

Furthermore, the concept of roaming, potential threats (calling back to the Ascent) is also an interesting idea that I think should be explored more. Without causing too much trouble, roaming soft-antags give the Horizon something to be wary of and to avoid - along with fueling some interesting RP. In Bay's case, the Ascent were this ultra-powerful force that were typically avoided and rarely attacked; but were feared when they did. I'm not saying we should have stuff like that in Aurora, just that the extra maneuvering, diplomacy, and RP that just the presence of a potentially hostile ship generated was well-worth the occasional derailed shitstorm. 

[Butterrobber202]

As posted in a different thread, I believe hostile ships would be a boon for the Horizon, especially openly hostile ships that are canon. The Spur is written to be a dangerous place full of seedy elements willing to use violence or other naughty deeds to get their way. I think allowing the third party system to represent these threats would be an excellent step in the right direction for us. 

However,
EE is not suitable for this role. They are a soft power in our setting, who use spying, corporate espionage and other subtle machinations. They are a clear threat to the SCC, not the Spur as a whole, as compared to a faction like pirates, who raid whoever they can with little regard to life.

EE should be considered "unfriendly", as mentioned in a post above this one, and clearly separated from violent hostile factions.