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Put Forth Every Effort Possible to Encourage Exploration and Use of the Shuttles


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This is pretty simple. We should encourage getting off the Horizon as much as possible for exploring shit, getting characters around. We should not empower command to remove that privilege without strong reason (ie red alert) and we should not empower people who are not outright antagonists the right to outright demand their removal from away sites without sufficient reason (ie admin intervention via higher power directives).

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Absolutely agreed with every point here.

Every single expedition I've been on has been nothing but fun and creates a lot of rp for everyone involved, and people are always excited to be invited to an expedition. As a Bridge Crewman, I try every round that we have adequate crew to get an expedition ready, if I can, it just makes things fun for people, and that's fun.

In addition to the removal of away sites.. As someone who was involved with a certain shift in question, I definitely agree that off-ship roles shouldn't be requesting removal from away sites.

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I definitely agree. More than anything else, it would make sense roleplay-wise since the Horizon's main job IS exploration-related.

 

Now I have one tiny issue with this. It's going to take a little story, though. Back on the Aurora, there was a time when we played with roughly the same team on most rounds for a full month or so. We were a VERY good team, we roleplayed well, we knew how to do our job well enough, there was fantastic chemistry between characters and OOCly; basically we were the PERFECT team. With our RD (I include her in the team) being quite eager to start expedition, we did a LOT of these, and it was good. Expeditions are REALLY fun. But we had to roleplay it in a very specific manner.

See, putting aside mineral rocks/outside of the Aurora's hull and into the caves, sites are not randomly generated, there is not an infinite number of these, evidently. This meant that, with the sheer pace at which we went out and explored, we VERY QUICKLY manage to thoroughly explore all of the away-sites. This meant that at some point, we somehow had to roleplay as if our characters had the experience of constantly going in expeditions, BUT did not explore this PARTICULAR site that we still know about OOCly. It's not that big of an issue, you just have to get used to it, and while we didn't mind at the time, and that I'm sure that there's more to explore today than back on the Aurora, I definitely expect people to get bored and stop caring about exploration.

The solution to this is easy really: add more site maps, as well as, perhaps, different types of randomly generated maps (we have our standard mineral asteroids, how about barren-ish inhabited planets for mining, like frozen or desert worldss occasionally, things like that, ones that would still have the ability to generate structures.) On that note, if anyone can teach me about mapping in SS13, or at least for Aurora, I would be making SO MANY MAPS...

 

On another note...

5 hours ago, restricted said:

We should not empower command to remove that privilege without strong reason (ie red alert) and we should not empower people who are not outright antagonists the right to outright demand their removal from away sites without sufficient reason (ie admin intervention via higher power directives).

There is one reason for preventing expeditions/explorations that would like to bring out: lack of preparation. It's not so much about team-size/composition. A properly geared and skilled three or even two-men team can definitely do miracles, but one that is NOT prepared, one that doesn't feature at least a single member that has the experience to properly handle unplanned situations and guide the team, will lead to some really, REALLY BAD. I'm not speaking "You will die" kind of bad, because you should expect death on away sites, while the few I got to explore so far weren't as dangerous as some I've seen in the time of the Aurora, they ARE meant to be dangerous, and the last one I explored definitely had the potential to kill us all had we not been prepared or cautious enough- but no, that's alright. No, the worst is to be BORED. And there's nothing like having a team stuck in the shuttle with no way to reach the site because no one brought the materials to build a bridge, or no one being able to communicate with no GPS or Station-Bounced radios (I know the Intrepid packs some), or even bad chemistry between players, with some disreguarding cooperation and messing everything up, either for them or the whole team (nothing like explosive decompression from another room throwing you onto an automated turret or a landmine). You don't want to end up waiting in front of a closed door with an engineer unable to open it for an hour and a half, or waiting inside the Intrepid with nothing to do because you're missing voidsuits, this is worse than (in-game) death to me, and to many others I assume.

It should be a command member's role to improve the roleplay, use their powers to make the round more fun, for them, and all other players... When the red flags of a very bad time are here, if the command member is SOMEHOW not able to fix the situation (bring an extra, better-trained member, bring more gear for them), then the expedition should be postponed in my opinion.

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On 07/07/2022 at 05:20, Captain Gecko said:

There is one reason for preventing expeditions/explorations that would like to bring out: lack of preparation. It's not so much about team-size/composition. A properly geared and skilled three or even two-men team can definitely do miracles, but one that is NOT prepared, one that doesn't feature at least a single member that has the experience to properly handle unplanned situations and guide the team, will lead to some really, REALLY BAD. I'm not speaking "You will die" kind of bad, because you should expect death on away sites, while the few I got to explore so far weren't as dangerous as some I've seen in the time of the Aurora, they ARE meant to be dangerous, and the last one I explored definitely had the potential to kill us all had we not been prepared or cautious enough- but no, that's alright. No, the worst is to be BORED. And there's nothing like having a team stuck in the shuttle with no way to reach the site because no one brought the materials to build a bridge, or no one being able to communicate with no GPS or Station-Bounced radios (I know the Intrepid packs some), or even bad chemistry between players, with some disreguarding cooperation and messing everything up, either for them or the whole team (nothing like explosive decompression from another room throwing you onto an automated turret or a landmine). You don't want to end up waiting in front of a closed door with an engineer unable to open it for an hour and a half, or waiting inside the Intrepid with nothing to do because you're missing voidsuits, this is worse than (in-game) death to me, and to many others I assume.


 

I think a lot of unintuitive / easy to forget stuff could be put on the intrepid to ensure not everyone's first expedition is a floop. We could add binoculars to the cockpit, rods to the engineering closets, and perhaps more jetpack fuel? I dunno. binocs and rods especially. Duct tape might also be prudent since it's easily forgettable but saves a lot of lives on EVA.

Edited by Confused rock
your honor I put the thing in the quote by mistake
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13 hours ago, Confused rock said:

I think a lot of unintuitive / easy to forget stuff could be put on the intrepid to ensure not everyone's first expedition is a floop. We could add binoculars to the cockpit, rods to the engineering closets, and perhaps more jetpack fuel? I dunno. binocs and rods especially. Duct tape might also be prudent since it's easily forgettable but saves a lot of lives on EVA.

I also think that having departments more prepared for EVA themselves would be a good touch. Security still don't get any GPS units despite being on a space ship which goes on Expeditions.

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5 hours ago, Lent23 said:

Maybe we can set up some expedition standardization or at the very least guidelines for preparedness and SOP?

That could be a good thing, but also could lead to a slippery slope of checklists that must be completed prior to departure and stuff, which just wastes time ultimately.

To expand on that the round is rather short at only two hours. Fully exploring a larger site could take even longer than that depending on complexity and how hard the players roleplay things out, so ideally the Intrepid will be fully prepared to take a team somewhere with only minimal prepwork to get an adequate team prepared.

Edited by restricted
thoguhts
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On 09/07/2022 at 18:46, restricted said:

That could be a good thing, but also could lead to a slippery slope of checklists that must be completed prior to departure and stuff, which just wastes time ultimately.

To expand on that the round is rather short at only two hours. Fully exploring a larger site could take even longer than that depending on complexity and how hard the players roleplay things out, so ideally the Intrepid will be fully prepared to take a team somewhere with only minimal prepwork to get an adequate team prepared.

Yeah, I feel like every expedition I've been on has run out of time. Definitely agree with more prep being put onto the intrepid by default. Like rock said, Binocs, tape, rods, jetpack/fuel. Ideally it should be as streamlined as possible - We ARE in an exploration ship funded by a super-megacorporation pact, you'd think the Intrepid would be fully stocked for these sorts of things.

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I think it would help if the Research EVA room in particular was transformed into an EVA expedition prep area (rather than the research EVA area that it is now) that has extra GPS units and more material that would be useful to the expedition. This would be far more useful to Research as well honestly. I might do this myself, later.

image.png.da32298f9060bd09d1efe3916f03941b.png.

We could also really use a generic voidsuit for expedition teams and one for the bridge crew since that ends up being an oddly time consuming bit of prep at times for those not in a department with their own suits or one not at liberty to give away too many.

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