Sputnik5927 - On the topic of the Horizon's militarization and event direction

[Sputnik5927]

The IC aspect

Before ship weapons were added, I was for the idea completely and I still am. The Horizon is too valuable to leave unguarded or at the mercy of hired deserters. I expected a modest armament of mostly defensive weapons such as flak weapons, point defense emplacements and a small to medium-sized cannon or two.

Instead, we got:

- One flak weapon

- One battleship-sized cannon

- And an energy artillery weapon aptly named the Leviathan, which can apparently destroy an entire city with one shot while at the same time draining the entire ship's energy reserves.

This is so lop-sided, it's unreal. This is the armament of an experimental monitor or long-range artillery barge, not of a research and exploration cruiser. This change in the Horizon's combat capability seems to have inspired a trend in which the events become more and more about sending the Horizon into conflicts that it cannot win and/or should not even engage with. At the time of writing, the upcoming event will see the Horizon relocating to the Orchard Moon with other local SCC vessels to defend against a Solarian strike force.

I can no longer suspend my disbelief when the SCC sends its most precious project, meant to search for Phoron, to a naval battle like this. Even if it was about protecting the Orchard Moon at all costs, Zavodskoi and other corporations have Security fleets that can be relocated in time. If not, what about allied military forces? I can find no logical reason for the SCC to send the Horizon, full of diplomats, high-ranking scientists, politicians, consulars and most importantly Phoron right into the arms of the SFA so that they can force a decisive battle against the SCC's most precious assets.

The OOC aspect

Forcing a civilian crew to engage in military operations repeatedly is not feasible. Today, I considered having my bridge crew character Martin Walker, who is a former Starliner captain, just say "I quit." and leave the Horizon. Because, why wouldn't he? This is not what he signed up for and the compensation on the Horizon is not nearly enough to keep people on-board under these conditions.

Even for my security officer Wolf Arges, who is a combat veteran and would be desensitized to a battle like this, the event doesn't offer any interesting roleplaying avenues. To him and other characters like him, all that is left to say is "I can handle it, others can't." and that's about it.

The line was already reached with the FSF versus Elyrans event, where a huge amount of trauma was inflicted on the crew. I have heard that the "constant trauma trips are exhausting", which I don't disagree with. I already dread having to make up a reason for my character(s) staying on the vessel and not quitting upon the waves of "kill the Solarians" mottos that will surely come after the event and reinforce Sol as the ultimate big bad with no ambiguity.

With this next event, the line will be clearly crossed and I cannot reasonably justify lots of characters staying on the ship. In this case, my character Wolf would just ask himself why he isn't trying to get back into Eagle Corp as a soldier if Zavodskoi is just paying him much less for the same job.

We cannot make it a norm to fight Solarian marines and sailors. That is not what the Horizon or the setting allows in its current state. The Horizon is not a warship and the crew is mostly civilians who have no combat experience. Most of them are not politically invested enough to risk their lives for the conglomerate, nor are they even united in their beliefs. The Horizon is a melting pot and it's crazy to use them as soldiers and expect them to perform properly. It's asking for another mutiny. It leads to a situation where you either have your character act against their actual personality or beliefs or force them to become hardened soldiers whenever the arc demands it, rather than in a dynamic and roleplay-driven way.

I remember being made fun of for having a militaristic-minded veteran Solarian (Wolf Arges), both OOC and IC for being seen as cliché or out of place in an apparently very civilian corporate vessel. Now this same attitude prevails while taking what used to be the domain of the ex-military character (being desensitized to combat and knowing how to act in high-stress situations) and cramming it into the head of every other character, taking away that aspect of roleplay from ex-military characters and forcing civilian characters to sacrifice that part of their personality and deal with the fact they just took part in an extended firefight with Solarian marines or Elyran infantry. It doesn't work - these people would quit on the spot.

 

At some point, it is no longer about "we have made it clear this is the way we are going" and more about if this is really the way the players want to go. I don't like it.

 

This is not a personal attack on the lore team and I shouldn't have to point this out if it wasn't a commonly made accusation. Read what I've written and read the replies of this thread and consider carefully if this is the road you want to go down.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Sputnik5927
Updated

[ImmortalRedshirt]

I didn't have a clear idea of what the Horizon's armaments would look like, but it probably would've been what Sputnik had assumed as well. It would've made sense, and would be reasonable for a ship of this role and value. We're meant to deter and get away from fights, not get into them, similar to other exploration ships in science fiction, the most notable example being the Enterprise. Instead we got exclusive access to the most advanced weapon in the Spur. This is an armament that would put NSV to shame, a server explicitly built around the gameplay loop of "go somewhere, shoot enemies", and made several changes to accommodate such.

As for things on the roleplay side, a noticeable tension has been placed on the direction of the Horizon, that being the tension between the Horizon as a civilian exploration ship searching for phoron, and the Horizon that sinks ever deeper into military nonsense. The relay's been jam packed with characters that want no part of this, and that entirely makes sense, they did not sign on to go on the offensive. But we know that won't change anything, the direction of the server points to events and regular rounds most often filled with violent conflict, whether on-ship or between ships. Gaming as a whole is filled with games where you can do nothing but fight the bad guy(hell, the same can be said about the majority of SS13), the ones where you can partake in dynamically developing stories as characters are few and far between. Maybe I'm just soft for wanting my characters to experience more than constant bloodshed and misery.

A ship has an insane amount of potential for letting us interact with all the wonders our setting has to offer, not just shoot at them.

[ErshOurHerzog]

I'm gonna write my own concerns here.
I feel like I was lied to. I always thought NBT was supposed to be something different from Baystation, without military RP, big artillery guns and whatever. I always saw AuroraStation server as a StarTrek-like multiplayer roleplaying game with a focus on aliens and Sci-Fi mysteries and character relationships. I wanted exploration of the things we have in lore. I want to visit Adhomai. I want to see how Unathi live on Moghes. I want to find the IPC group called "Purpose". Now there are guns, Leviathan, maneuvers, involvement of the Horizon in politics and war, phoron bombs, the Spur is ON FIRE, a galaxy-wide Great Depression is happening when everyone suffers one way or the other, and now the Horizon, a civilian ship with 80~ percent of the characters having NO MILITARY BACKGROUND being mobilized to help with a defence from Solarian Alliance. I am not going to lie, I see some fucked up references on some real life events. This hitting me right in the gut because I am trying to escape the reality by playing as my favorite characters, I do NOT want to dive and go through the same shit as my characters, because I am going through that right now. I hate being forced in military RP.

I also find it hard to believe the current situation. The SCC actions do not make any sense from the POV of Logic. SCC is one of the most powerful entities in the entire galaxy and has help from TCFL and all the corporations besides Einstein Engines. What is the reason for this backtracking? The lore team says it's all because we have cool scanners and a BFG Leviathan. But the lore team forgets that we don't really have trained personnel for this. As I said, the majority of the crew does not have military background. Nothing stops the Horizon from having another mutiny again. The SCC must understand that. By calling the Horizon they risking losing two VALUABLE projects: Orchard's Moon and, well, SCCV Horizon. They are valuable because these two projects are doing everything they can trying to save the Spur. Calling the Horizon is a waste of time. The weapons and the drives on the Horizon are experimental. This does not make any sense. And as you probably know, if people want decent RP, the universe must make sense.

Lore writers often like to ask: "Did you read the lore articles? You have no idea what happened because you didn't read the post I wrote."
I am probably going to surprise you: Almost No One Wants To Read Imaginary News. This is time consuming. These news are connected with each other. They are connected with the species lore. It gets more bloated and complex every day. And to understand what exactly is happening in the events, players must know the details and have their fullest attention. This is not, you know, user-friendly. Not to mention we don't see most of that lore in game, it's practically non-existent. There must be a way to make the lore simpler. I can't imagine how difficult it is right now for the new players who want to get themselves in canon and establish their characters.

My support goes to Sputnik. My characters also do not have any motivation to not leave the ship. It is becoming more and more dangerous. My Zhan Tajara, Jribekk, will feel a lot more safer on ADHOMAI, on Crevus. My skrell character, Willsh, does not want to fight for the Corporate, even though they can. They will go back to serving in Qukala, skrellian navy. Making those two characters ignore this little war and stay on the ship will be, I dunno, FailRP.

I respect the lore writers, however. Species and the factions lore articles are great and I enjoy making the characters using them. But I hate the current way we're going. Please, take your time, rework whatever you were doing there. Sometimes taking a step back gets you ten steps forward. That is my way of seeing things, however.

 

[Lucaken]

In the interest of maintaining a more receptive environment for feedback (for both players and writers), we are going to leave official feedback until the end of the arc. The conversation in the Relay, and the conversations it created elsewhere, have proven that the way we engage with feedback is generally not conducive to making our writing, or the experience of players, any better. We will be trying out new ways of reaching the playerbase that don't involve direct player-to-writer discussion. You are obviously free to express your opinions here and anywhere else, but do not expect official responses. Furthermore, keep in mind that until the arc is actually done, you cannot reliably presume what will and won't happen in an event. I understand that a lot of vitriol and emotion was created in the Relay, but we rely on your trust in us in order to keep going. 

As a note, the event will be preceeding next week no matter what, as we are not interested in losing months of buildup, time and effort on the part of every single branch of the staff team to abandon it now. Regardless of opinion, I hope to see all of you enjoying what we worked so hard for these past weeks.

[niennab]

I have not been able to attend the more recent events so while I cannot offer direct criticism on how they've been handled, I feel as though this thread embodies some of the concerns that I have felt towards the server's direction as of late. 

Personally, I feel as though what we lost by being a station has not been met or exceeded by being a mobile ship. 

When the server was the Aurora, we had the Aurora station asteroid, a larger nearby station (The Odin), a planet (Biesel) and a city (Mendel) that all offered a change of scenery and a way for characters to persist organically. The immediate world was very fleshed out and offered incredible variety to play, especially on the Relay. The nuanced way each character lived and how all felt uniquely different from one another.

In being made into a mobile ship, I initially thought this would be a great idea. We get to not only see the many places that exist in the Aurora-verse but we justifiably have a reason for why the ship/station is always at the center of the world's conflict. However, I don't believe the direction of exploration has been met and we've lost a lot of flavour to the day to day experience of our characters. Personally I think a push towards exploration, which I could be wrong but always felt was the heart and soul of NBT, fitted with maps would make for an overall improvement moving forward.

[Alberyk]

This is an issue of expectations. People have expections (which are frenquently made up by themselves for multiple reasons) about things and become disappointed when they are not met.

The following are facts:

-the horizon was always presented as a ship to search for phoron, in fact that is written in the first line in its wiki page

-phoron is the most valuable resource

-the spur became a very unstable and dangerous place since the kotw

So yeah, phoron hunting/searching is something dangerous. The horizon is not an exploration ship just cataloging planets or picking up geological samples. It is a ship after the resource that people fight over. It is not going to be a walk in the park. We never promised otherwise, in fact, we worked to establish these facts over multiple articles, wiki updates, and events. Your character should know everything I pointed here, they signed for a ship hunting down the spice of the future. Think like it is a caravel during the age of the exploration.

We made clear what the Horizon is about and what our universe is. The lore team will make this even more clear with wik iupdates.

About next event, it makes sense. A ship can be repaired and even rebuilt if needed, phoron can't. It makes sense in character for the SCC to send everything it can in the area to protect the moon. Now, further details will be revealed as needed.

[kermit]

I'm reserving most of my thoughs for the official feedback thread, though with the lore team's approach to feedback and criticism mentioned as well as lore direction, I'd like to speak on that more generally.

A large criticism of the last Dreary Futures arc was that many felt it exclusive if they were playing non-Command, non-Security characters. This second Dreary Futures arc has predominantly been ship combat focused, and therefore has excluded all of Security and half of Command in addition to all departments previously excluded, so has wholly achieved the opposite of what people were hoping to address in the last feedback thread.

A large criticism of the last arc was that they did not feel the setting was being utilised. We moved from a stationary setting to a mobile one so we could be toured through the lore that lots of people have poured their hearts into writing. Instead, we got locked out of Elyra, one of the more vibrant planets under Human Lore. Now in the Badlands, one of the more interesting regions of the Orion Spur with it's exotic fauna and flora and daring adventurers... we're hunting pirates instead of sight-seeing and potentially uncovering phoron-rich exoplanets with anomalous fauna or large jungles which could be explored by science teams over several shifts with phoron relics contained within. Events don't need to be centred around conflict to be fun, new conflicts between groups don't need to underpin every arc from hereon – there is a bounty of lore in our setting that's thusfar been unused due to our setting formerly being confined to the Romanovich Cloud. Again, the concerns people raised were ignored for the second Dreary Futures arc.

Another large criticism of the last arc was railroading, though some said the mutiny round made up for it. Yet this morning there was an announcement, out of anyones control, that the Horizon's being drafted to take part in a space battle. Choices afforded to players and their characters are: play, don't play; resign, 'this wasn't what I signed up for' or stay for the battle.

Looking back at the King of the World Arc, people praised the lack of conflict and instead the consequences of conflict occuring elsewhere in the Spur. The Aurora performed a function which made sense – TCFL resupplies, harboring displaced refugees. There was a good use of setting, everything felt natural, and the universe created felt alive.

The feedback is there, what people would like and have liked from arcs isn't hard to decipher. It feels like there is a colossal disconnect between the lore team leading the direction of events and the playerbase, and it feels like the community's feedback and expectations for the direction of lore are not listened to when it's presented. Lucaken mentions finding a new way to engage with the playerbase and I'm optimistic about that, but with much of the criticism raised following the previous arc not being worked upon, how do we know the lore team'll work on it this time around? Why was the feedback from the last arc not acted upon – was this second Dreary Futures arc written before the feedback thread or something?

We should be valuing collective storytelling where everyone gets a say in the direction of the lore and gets to chip in with what their expectations of lore are. I think Nienna outlines what the playerbases' general expections were fairly well, and is a sentiment I've seen expressed in previous feedback threads, in the discords and on the gameserver, and with the direction events are going in right now, it does feel like the NBT and the shift from a stationary setting to a mobile setting has been an overall detrimental thing for the lore. I think these expectations should be catered to and that arcs should be written for the playerbase not at the playerbase.

Given the overwhelming dislike and pessimism expressed – on the relay, on the game server in both OOC and IC channels, on the forums here – towards this upcoming event, at what point does the lore team weigh the benefits over any sunk costs and decide whether the best course of action may actually be to not go ahead with an event and to instead review and compare the playerbases' expectations with the lore teams' expectations?

Edited December 4, 2022 by kermit
L take

[Alberyk]

Just now, kermit said:

Looking back at the King of the World Arc, people praised the lack of conflict and instead the consequences of conflict occuring elsewhere in the Spur. The Aurora performed a function which made sense – TCFL resupplies, harboring displaced refugees. There was a good use of setting, everything felt natural, and the universe created felt alive.

Unsure if you were even there, but we had the possibility of marines attacking the NSS Aurora during any round. In fact, during the final events even had a fight with them at the aurora. The conflict was literally happening in the area as well.

[CourierBravo]

I feel like it might be worthwhile to throw in my two bits. Folks in this thread are outlining my problems with Aurora in its current direction fantastically. There’s a fundamental disconnect from what the player base wants and what the development/lore team want. I, frankly, do not want to play on a pseudo military vessel. The arcs and events since Horizon seem to be popular with the people who can make it, especially with security and command who are the main people engaging in it. This has been criticized already, and seemingly little consideration was made to it. If this is the path you want to go down, by all means. But it doesn’t encourage interest in me or plenty of others it seems. Good luck with that. 
 

In my opinion, the reason so many people had expectations that weren’t delivered on, is because we were given a setting where we could go anywhere and do anything. We could have explored the Valley Hale, then gone towards Assunzione, then gone anywhere from there. Out into the unknown, up towards wild space north, down around the alien parts of space. Anywhere. But we didn’t. Instead, the ship has sat in the Valey hale doing political work and military work. So much for research. If you guys wanted to make Aurora a fighting ship and do this crap where it’s out fending off a naval fleet? You should have started with that. If any expectations were let down, it’s that the team focused so hard on war, political fighting between factions, and military development, you forgot that this is a science and exploration vessel. And didn’t deliver on any exploration, as far as I’m aware. Correct me if I’m wrong, but has there been any main arc exploration events? (That’s a genuine invitation, i stopped keeping up a couple months back.) 

 

Finally, i want to bring up KOTH. I don’t think the team realizes why it was successful and everything since hasn’t been. KOTH saw all departments largely working together on a threat we were all unified against. Dreary futures seemed to see us fighting what was seemingly our allies. Though obviously not. 
 

I know my whole post is messy, but it’s nearly midnight for me and I’m tired. If any of you on the lore team care about this server, make some change. You’ve done little with the setting. Do something with it. You’ve done little with the crew. Run events that make the crew feel meaningful. Write some damn summaries so everyone actually knows what’s going on for gods sake. You can’t genuinely call yourself a research ship and ignore every explorative avenue. DM me if you want ideas, i care deeply for this setting and it’s beyond frustrating to see it turn into this. Or don’t. Stick your head into the ground and ignore your community. I’d be surprised if you’re peaking 10 players by next New Years Eve. Goodnight, sweet dreams, and please just listen. Yeah?

Edited December 4, 2022 by Bejewledpot
Extra point i forgot to write.

[Sneakyranger]

I played the chief engineer for the last event, as well as the FSF v Elyra event. I missed the VR event and briefly stopped by the Orchard Moon. I also played several Dreary Futures I events, but don't feel those are relevant to what I want to say.

With that context out of the way, I felt the need to make the following statement:

I've heard a lot of people say that the last event - and most Dreary Futures II ship to ship combat events - involve even fewer crew than the usual complaint of "events are security and command only". In my experience, when moderate to heavy ship to ship combat actually occurs, the events have involved more of the crew than any other event I've seen. Medical, engineering, non-head of staff command, and last event I even saw Operations working at what I felt was quite a heavy pace compared to their usual participation in events since I have started regularly attending them in April. The only department that I felt was left idle to any noteworthy degree (besides service, the natural odd man out) was security, and even then a few of them were able to participate in an expedition early in the round in the most recent event.

The FSF v Elyra event did only involve command, for the most part - even though I would argue it was only a small subsection of command though that is besides the point - but that was because the players on the bridge decided not to actively participate in the firefight. That is a fine decision to make, but I feel that that cannot reasonably be levied on the lore team in terms of player involvement. I am certain that had we chosen to engage, the rest of the ship would have been much, much more active.

To sum, I take very specific issue with the claim that ship v ship events involve less crew than the type of events previously complained about and do not feel that it is a reasonable complaint to make. If you have an issue with it anyway, it is my opinion that you might want to redirect your focus to the type of involvement to be had (construction v damage control for engineers, for example).

Finally, I feel that I might as well throw in my two cents as well; I am pretty happy with the events so far, and I would advise anyone who is upset by the current direction to be careful before determining themselves the majority. Not necessarily to say that that is not true - I do not know for certain - but it is very easy to have a skewed view in that regard. I would like to see a cooldown period after part 2 is finished, which from what I have been told is the lore team's intent.

 

Edited December 4, 2022 by Sneakyranger

[Alberyk]

19 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

You can’t genuinely call yourself a research ship and ignore every explorative avenue.

It was never meant to be a research ship. It is there to search for Phoron. See what I mean by making up expectations.

20 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

We could have explored the Valley Hale, then gone towards Assunzione, then gone anywhere from there. Out into the unknown, up towards wild space north, down around the alien parts of space. Anywhere.

It is not that simple. You need to create assets, write lore, and code. The nbt has been out for around seven months. This stuff is not easy but we are working as much as we can to create assets for these places, as we could see with the orchad moon. That stuff takes time. It is not just having ideas. Having cool ideas don't make sprites, code, and writing appear out of nowhere.

[KingOfThePing]

Some points have been made, some points have been brought up that make me scratch my head. The Horizon is an exploration vessel, not a research vessel. We are not researching phoron, we are looking for it. I don't know where this stubborn opinion that we are a research ship are stems from. Maybe someone wrote it somewhere sometime long ago but it's not the case.

Now, to the events. I believe it is a very big task to try to involve everyone of the crew. It's nigh impossible I'd say. Fact is that ship-to-ship combat involves more crew into combat and conflict than ever before in a very natural way. The Horizon is no military vessel but deep space exploration or missions that involve only one ship mean you have to take care of yourself. There is nothing wrong. There was a deliberate choice against up-armoring security or give them boarding pods. It's fine as is and even if given a bigger arsenal, together with heavy weapons it would not make them a military. Or at least not more than the PMCG characters already are.

 

On the events - I personally didn't find the first dreary futures too engaging. This one is much better. Especially the last event, where there was both an away mission AND a space battle was very cool. Really engaging and stakes were high. Really liked it a lot. I agree that there must be better available summaries for the players who couldnt attend. The very nature of our new setting makes situations more complicated, politically and geopolitical. 

All in all, let's be honest - no one wants a nother politics arc where some random politician holds a speech on the holodeck. If I want my share of IC politics, I read the news articles. This doesnt mean that there should never be something like this, but currently events build on intruige and mystique. Very well actually. Lore locations have to be utilized more, but a lot is still work in progress, including away sites, planets, ruins, etc. It is a gargantuan task to implement all this and it takes time, that's why I dont understand statements like 

Quote

Finally, i want to bring up KOTH. I don’t think the team realizes why it was successful and everything since hasn’t been. KOTH saw all departments largely working together on a threat we were all unified against. Dreary futures seemed to see us fighting what was seemingly our allies. Though obviously not. 

It's undermining the great tasks that have been undertaken by everyone who was and is involved. Feedback has been very good and while I dont always agree with the loremasters they both do an actually good job with what is going on. I might risk coming off as rude, but people who don't contribute at all, might not see the really big amount of work this is.

 

26 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

Stick your head into the ground and ignore your community. I’d be surprised if you’re peaking 10 players by next New Years Eve.

Sure, buddy just like the last 20 times someone called this. 👍

Edited December 4, 2022 by KingOfThePing

[CourierBravo]

Ask the community for help instead of forcing 1 or 2 guys to do it. God knows i have several maps i never did anything with i could just give you. 

1 minute ago, Alberyk said:

It is not just having ideas. Having cool ideas don't make sprites, code, and writing appear out of nowhere

It has a research lab. A large one at that. A large portion of the ship is dedicated to the various sciences. You know what i mean, don’t just point “see, we never explicitly said it!” Map design matters when building a narrative. More than that, the same exact massive research set up was on the Aurora. 
 

4 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

See what I mean by making up expectations

[CourierBravo]

4 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

The Horizon is an exploration vessel, not a research vessel. We are not researching phoron, we are looking for it. I don't know where this stubborn opinion that we are a research ship are stems from.

The massive science wing identical to the one in the research staton.

[Alberyk]

3 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

Ask the community for help instead of forcing 1 or 2 guys to do it. God knows i have several maps i never did anything with i could just give you. 

People do that. They have made ships for the places we have been. Still it is not enough. I have ran multiple lore arcs and I know how much works it takes.

3 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

It has a research lab. A large one at that. A large portion of the ship is dedicated to the various sciences. You know what i mean, don’t just point “see, we never explicitly said it!” Map design matters when building a narrative. More than that, the same exact massive research set up was on the Aurora. 

It is still not a research ship. It also has a large engineering department, is it a engineering ship somehow? It is there to hunt phoron. That is what it is in the narrative and what we will base our lore arcs on. We made clear that it is there to search for phoron.

[KingOfThePing]

3 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

The massive science wing identical to the one in the research staton.

And? I dont understand that argument. It has a large Medbay, too. Is it a hospital ship?

[Kintsugi]

59 minutes ago, kermit said:

Given the overwhelming dislike and pessimism expressed – on the relay, on the game server in both OOC and IC channels, on the forums here – towards this upcoming event, at what point does the lore team weigh the benefits over any sunk costs and decide whether the best course of action may actually be to not go ahead with an event and to instead review and compare the playerbases' expectations with the lore teams' expectations?

The idea of a vocal minority complaining about an event that hasn't even occurred yet while the playerbase doesn't even know what that event will involve except in the broadest of strokes being reason to cancel an event is outlandish. There are no sunk costs here.

35 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

I know my whole post is messy, but it’s nearly midnight for me and I’m tired. If any of you on the lore team care about this server, make some change. You’ve done little with the setting. Do something with it. You’ve done little with the crew. Run events that make the crew feel meaningful. Write some damn summaries so everyone actually knows what’s going on for gods sake. You can’t genuinely call yourself a research ship and ignore every explorative avenue. DM me if you want ideas, i care deeply for this setting and it’s beyond frustrating to see it turn into this. Or don’t. Stick your head into the ground and ignore your community. I’d be surprised if you’re peaking 10 players by next New Years Eve. Goodnight, sweet dreams, and please just listen. Yeah?

This paragraph consists mostly of veiled insults levelled against the lore team, oftentimes baseless ones. Summaries are written. The setting is actively being developed and explored. Just because you don't personally like the direction the server has taken doesn't mean it's going to die, and saying that it will die won't kill it - and it's extremely unfair to say that the lore team is actively working to destroy the server out of negligence or obstinate refusal to do anything productive.

7 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

Ask the community for help instead of forcing 1 or 2 guys to do it. God knows i have several maps i never did anything with i could just give you. 

The community has had eight months to work on assets that could be used. The ones that have been have been used: but as it were, "asking the community" only gets you so far. Even with rudimentary guides published on the matter, very few people have taken mapping away sites and ships into their own hands. In fact, all of our ships and away sites can probably be traced to around the same half dozen people.

7 minutes ago, Bejewledpot said:

It has a research lab. A large one at that. A large portion of the ship is dedicated to the various sciences. You know what i mean, don’t just point “see, we never explicitly said it!” Map design matters when building a narrative. More than that, the same exact massive research set up was on the Aurora. 

A large portion of the ship is also dedicated to an infirmary and a security wing. Are we a hospital ship or a police vessel as a result? Proportionally engineering is the largest department. Are we a construction vessel?

My ten cents? I've enjoyed the arcs and I'm looking forward to the finale. I am hoping it's a lot of fun. It would be nice to mix more away sites in here or there - the last event's away site was pretty interesting, and it'd be good to have more expedition-focused events mixed in during future arcs.

Edited December 4, 2022 by DanseMacabre

[MattAtlas]

I'm going to leave comments on the ship to ship weapons part as that's what I directly coded and oversaw.

4 hours ago, Sputnik5927 said:

Before ship weapons were added, I was for the idea completely and I still am. The Horizon is too valuable to leave unguarded or at the mercy of hired deserters. I expected a modest armament of mostly defensive weapons such as flak weapons, point defense emplacements and a small to medium-sized cannon or two.

What you expected was completely wrong and not what was communicated at all. I've always been 100% open (in Discord and on the PR) with what we were going to add and it was never any sort of secret. You shouldn't have expected anything because what was to be added never changed.

4 hours ago, Sputnik5927 said:

- One flak weapon

- One battleship-sized cannon

- And an energy artillery weapon aptly named the Leviathan, which can apparently destroy an entire city with one shot while at the same time draining the entire ship's energy reserves.

I don't know what's up with the random bolding, but it makes what you said come off as basically an incensed personal attack, which I don't like. Addressing what you've you've put forward:

• How many flak weapons did you expect to be added? Two? Four? It would've been really unwieldy with how the system is, and there's no real way to make operating several guns at once not unwieldy -- I've said it before that we can't properly model how many armaments ships would have (just look at how many CIWS battleships have, for example) because of the way events work: we have to balance things somewhat.
• Battleship-sized cannon is something you made up. I never said it for sure. Here's the description of the cannon in game:

	desc = "A Kumar Arms high-velocity cannon and flagship of <i>\"Chivalry\"</i> weapons line, developed in 2461 as an upgrade to its predecessor, the Ballista. Its upgrades include a bigger payload, a more streamlined loading process, and easier maintenance, making this cannon one of the best armaments in the Spur."

Doesn't say "battleship sized" anywhere.

As for the energy artillery weapon, it doesn't actually drain the entire ship's energy reserves (it draines 20% power from its own SMES and doesn't touch any other power in the ship). When I told you it can destroy a city, I didn't actually specify what size of city, which should've made it obvious that it isn't entirely set in stone. Even the in game document doesn't say the Leviathan's actual power.

4 hours ago, Sputnik5927 said:

This is so lop-sided, it's unreal. This is the armament of an experimental monitor or long-range artillery barge, not of a research and exploration cruiser. This change in the Horizon's combat capability seems to have inspired a trend in which the events become more and more about sending the Horizon into conflicts that it cannot win and/or should not even engage with. At the time of writing, the upcoming event will see the Horizon relocating to the Orchard Moon with other local SCC vessels to defend against a Solarian strike force.

It isn't very lopsided when you remember that in the event where the Horizon was held up by an FSF cruiser, it had 40 rail guns aimed at it. I think that gets across how the Horizon's arsenal is pretty much just a self defense one (and what it has on the map is what it actually has on the spec sheet, there are no limitations like I said before in play).

[Sycmos]

Sputnik has been part of the community for a considerably shorter time than I have been and has more or less hit most of all of the points I could have as someone who has been consistently active on the forums, in the Discords, and in-game for the last two years, which should be concerning if not downright alarming. I have been present for a significant number more in-game events, out of game events, community blowouts and drama happenings than he has and yet the conclusions we've both come to still come to be startlingly similar. If a relatively new player can immediately see the faults in our community relations and how they impact the narrative of our setting's story as clearly as I can see them, does that not raise a larger issue with how we as a community function? The NBT was in development for a significant period, before I had returned after a lengthy hiatus, and continued well until the year after the conclusion of the King of the World arc - a period of time that seems so incredibly long in the lifespan of an SS13 server that a narrative shortcoming of this magnitude is symptomatic of something considerably deeper than just player dissatisfaction with the direction of our new setting. I feel that there is a very real and possibly irreconcilable divide between staff intent and playerbase opinion to such a degree that the reality in which a majority of decisions are made by staff are not the same as the played-in experience of players who use the lore and setting they curate, and to the detriment of the actual played experience when the vision of lore does not meet it. It takes a considerable amount of effort to create something of this size in a circle that constantly changes members and in turn opinions on a monthly basis, but the fact of the matter is that this effort still needs to be received by a playerbase who are there to experience it - positively or negatively, and the latter will always hurt more because players invest a part of their own energy in trusting staff to take care with their stories and will feel burned when they don't.

Ultimately this is the crux of the issue with the direction of this arc - it feels completely apathetic to the lives of player characters and the setting that we've all been led to believe is a civilian exploration story. Excuses can be made in favor of the corporatocracy that dominates our setting, but I genuinely believe the escalation of events stretches the realm of possibility given the circumstances which said corporatocracy exists. If the ship is not a civilian one, is it a military one? If it's not a military one, then what is its purpose among the myriad other military fleets in the setting? Where is the line that players can draw a safe reserve which they can base their characters, knowing they won't be tossed to the wind by the whims of writers?

I am beginning to feel that there isn't one, and that the unique setting which the Aurora offered is being muddied for the inclusion of mechanics that are further flanderizing our setting and characters, making high roleplay less and less manageable, and cater to a small subset of players.

[Scheveningen]

"Almost no one wants to read the articles" has probably been the best post I've ever seen written on here. I am not an article head. I don't think anyone who has to buy their own bread and pay their other bills often finds it an engaging use of time to be doing anything other than sitting down, relaxing, and logging on to interact with the community here. Reading articles is a very solitary task that often leads to reading the same information already written down relative to whatever faction is being spoken about 50 times over in the past. I've just today read several articles across the various newsposts just to see if anything has fundamentally changed, and the answer is, well, no, not really. The ultimate shortcoming that is a result of these arcs is they completely disable other areas of the lore team from being able to fundamentally do anything besides write articles and rework aspects of their jurisdiction they don't strongly agree with being part of the lore relative to what their predecessors might've written. That fucking sucks! No one can say this is good! 

"Well, it logistically isn't feasible to be running even two arcs simultaneously" is a very good counterpoint and all, but the current status quo is that it takes 2 months tops to conclude a singular event arc. That's a lot of time! It makes me wonder exactly how long it takes to get assets and writing down for what the next event arc. It's a lot of time being spent doing one thing at a time, and all the members of the other parts of the team can do is wait for their turn and plan out whether their corner of the lore is going to be relevant or not. And it's really difficult for us on the outside to really foresee in any resemblance whether that's going to happen since we obviously don't get to see internal planning documentation or longform staff discussions. God knows I've been on the inside before and a single conversation about something small can take hours.

I don't know, could we get a timeline of when the last Vaurca and Unathi lore arcs were? I'm hoping the last significant event from the Sintasphere wasn't the Aut'akh reveal because I genuinely cannot remember what actually occurred within the 2021 timeframe since I wasn't here for most of it.

[ErshOurHerzog]

8 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

but the current status quo is that it takes 2 months tops to conclude a singular event arc

Making it faster is not possible. It is not possible for any SS13 community. The new setting basically bites more it can swallow right now. Everything that people want from the Horizon is exploration, landing on real planets, right? Well, it's just not possible to make all that even in two years. Because, as Matt said, you need to code, write lore, talk with the community, make sure everything is in order... It is the most hardest part of developing a server like that. It requires a lot of time, and the players can't always give their time to a project like that. I agree with you, Schev. 

 

I feel like going back to Aurora, THE Station will be so much better. It's sad that I have these feelings. Horizon is too ambitious for canon events. Though playing the usual HRP SS13 rounds is alright. Off-ship roles help with that.

[Kintsugi]

8 minutes ago, ErshOurHerzog said:

I feel like going back to Aurora, THE Station will be so much better. It's sad that I have these feelings. Horizon is too ambitious for canon events. Though playing the usual HRP SS13 rounds is alright. Off-ship roles help with that.

Going back to the Aurora would be one of the worst mistakes imaginable for the server. Aurora's event arcs were constantly hamstrung by the setting itself and the stationary location meant 90% of the factions in the lore could not even be interacted with, at least not in a way that was impactful or made sense. One can claim that the Horizon is "too ambitious" for canon events, but I fail to see how this is the case at all - it takes as much work to develop a Horizon arc as it does to develop an Aurora arc - and your proposed solution is to completely undermine a development that has allowed us to actually interact with the lore at large. To be frank, the sentiment doesn't make any sense to me, and it'd actively be making the server worse to act upon it.

[Dreamix]

Man, I don't know. I've really mixed feelings. I think ship guns are really neat, and I love to see 3rd parties fight each other, and I participate in those battles as well.
But, I really don't like the militarization of Horizon and our setting, and centering everything around war and violent conflict.
I think the ship based setting is an awesome idea, and it should stay like this. I just don't like the direction we are currently heading at.
Maybe that direction will change, maybe not, maybe the finale event will be ultra awesome and unforgettable despite the initial pessimism before it has even started, I can't know.
These are my thoughts or feedback, based on what I've experienced and observed myself, as a command main, and also an ordinary player that has no insights into staff/lore matters.

 

Like if you went a month or two back in time, and made a generic ex-solarian-military war veteran char, you'd be the center of jokes, with people both OOC and IC telling you "we are civilian/corporate, not military, lmao". Most of our crew is civilians, and we have passengers and the like.

But now? Captains, XOs, and BCs operate ship guns. An XO that's a paper-pusher bureaucrat suit was pretty natural, as XO was just renamed HoP that handles our cash and jobs - but now it's growing closer to an actual XO as on military ships. BC used to be a chill job, entry-level into command and to do expeditions from time to time, and I've seen some chars that were like shuttle pilots or the like, and wanted myself to do a science-expedition-oriented BC that used to be Zeng-hu - but now it's pretty much forcing a military-based background that ship combat is expected and necessary, and that's not to mention you can just get killed at any time by flak or a longbow during ship combat. Your ex-solarian-military char would probably be still made fun of, but at least now it'd be a background that makes perfect sense, seeing the things that Horizon has experienced so far.

I've seen talks about adding boarding pods OOC, and about boarding other ships both IC and OOC. How many months until security backgrounds like an Idris bank guard or debt reclamation IPC would be soft-invalidated, with the job more favoring literal corporate marines that are launched onto a hostile ship to kill their crew? You can say "but nothing is stopping you from playing a chill BC/XO/sec officer, they just got training when they got on Horizon and can continue to be chill", but it's real weird now that ship combat expected and common, and all crew expected to be shot at and potentially killed, and some crew is expected to go out and do the killing. Not in self-defence, but more just killing and dying "for the phoron company".

We should not be doing war and space battles, except to maybe fend off pirates, which I thought would be the intention behind the ship guns we get. But now we have a literal gunship (the Intrepid) to do CAS with, and huge fuckoff guns strapped onto Horizon. You can say that ship combat involves more than just security and command, but is that really the good kind of involvement? Like operations just loads the guns, orders ammo, and does nothing else really. Is that fun? I don't know, because I don't play ops. But I can imagine it's really not, as ops does not really decide how the event is going to go, and only do the same repetitive tasks, and anything they do could be done by someone else - I've had engineers load the guns once for example, when there was only one hangar tech, and myself as XO I've helped with it as well.

 

I hate to hear about this being "an issue of expectations". Maybe it is, maybe not, but the fact is that currently most of the crew is civilians, and we are militarizing things, at the same time saying that we are a "corporate" setting. "Phoron hunting/searching is something dangerous" - only because staff/event/lore people make it dangerous. We could as well be doing a chill tour to see the different interesting planets and places in the spur, scanning each one for phoron with our special advanced scanners or whatever. A lot of people, me included, were very excited to explore Elyra! But instead we've been fighting pirates this whole vent arc, and will be fighting pirates still in the arc finale. Maybe we won't, cause only the staff/event/lore people know what is planned, but like, yeah. A common complaint is that everything is grim, dark, and... dreary. And man, the futures really are dreary, and I do not really like it.

I also hate to see people focusing on some tiny details, when responding to the critique in the thread, and ignoring the general feedback or point or whatever, or the bigger picture, not sure how to phrase this honestly. I'd hate to see someone coming in to respond to my post with "actually Idris already trains IRUs in ship boarding so what you are saying is wrong", ignoring everything else, and not really adding anything to the discussion. Like, people shouldn't have to know all the tiny details about everything. Sometimes things look like something else, because of how they are portrayed. This is very long already, so no more rambling I guess.

[Scheveningen]

I don't think we need to go back to the station, necessarily. I believe the issue is the ambition with trying to deal with different types of themes in a canonical sense conflicts with the round-by-round basis that the actual playerbase is more accustomed to dealing with, which is a larger bane to this server's enjoyability than what a canon event supposedly would be in the eyes of a naysayer. Let me tell you what the actual problem is...

The general system of the game itself still deals with the SS13ification of goofy antags and the general expectation that, on a round-by-round basis, there must be an antagonist. While I agree with the idea that there must either be a free role that can cause trouble for the primary population and present a genuine challenge that they must deal with in order to tell a good story later, the weakness of certain game modes (vampire, technomancer, and changeling) makes it such that the average experience of a regular player is that you get very tired and worn out dealing with the exact same rotation of antagonists is that no one wants to play them, really, because they absolutely suck to play relative to how fun and wacky the 3rd parties are to play.

So when the playerbase is expected to make a different transition between the grindy, shitty, goofy antag-filled experience we currently have where a small minority of people are actually willingly playing antagonist and finding out quickly why no one does (people are OOCly antagonistic to antags, because we've all dealt with them in their current form too many times already), the result is a jarred playerbase that was expecting something else. Far and away, I'll say, the quality of canonical events, no matter how chaotic or shitty in outcome, is absolutely superior to a generic round with vampires that spend 2:00 stealthsucking from character's throats until actually going loud because the antagonist design is fundamentally flawed.

Of course this isn't an issue with traitor/rev/ninja/burglars, because you can still do WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT! You can't do whatever the hell you want as techno/vamp/ling. You are forced into a specific style of play/antagonism that you are the most predictable to deal with, and the resulting experience is the exact same every round.

Essentially, what I'm saying is, the fundamental issue as well is not just, or even explicitly with the lore, but the fact that the round-to-round basis of how antags come to play most often doesn't even let the stories that are told through the lore writing actually come into play, because the fucking antagonist is anywhere between the major offenders of ling/vampire/techno and more tentatively cult but at least playing cult can be really fun since you're focused around building a team before going absolutely bonkers and insane. The prior three I mentioned are mostly crappy, lone antagonists that easily get obliterated by any pushback from the crew that want to survive.

It makes for a really jarring transition is what I'm saying, when we come back to the occasionally-once-a-week event where it only happens for a single round in a day and then immediately ends after 2 or so hours. Don't get me started on people who seriously whine when folks actually democratically vote continue for a round they wish to keep playing...

Basically, we're dealing with a shitty status quo at the moment, and the staleness of how things are outside of events is starting to make people really bitter and annoyed when they get into events because they get into the thought that nothing is going to get better because what happens in an event only matters within the context of that event arc. But once the event ends and you get back to the standard rotation of "Oh boy we have to kill the armory thief again" or "time to decapitate the changeling once again", I can see why we get this rhetoric of "you don't even play" from people who generally speaking only play during events to escape that. 

But do we really need a status quo where people are taking events so ultra-seriously and cynically because the game at its standard playthroughs just really blows incredibly hard right now?

Solution: Kill the wacky game modes everyone is tired of, replace them with more 3rd parties that are permitted to antagonize. Hell, give us an infestation/alien-like game mode (not in secret rotation) with greimorians if we want rounds that are just shoot-em-ups with some roleplay inside them. At least people would know what they're voting for. The whole of the secret rotation needs to be cleaned out in the interim if we're not getting Dynamic anytime soon.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Scheveningen

[Caelphon]

I just want to ask that everyone waits until the event before they have these preconceived ideas about what’s gonna happen. I’ll gladly listen to feedback then, but for now I ask you do not have complaints about an event that has yet to happen, and that none of the greater playerbase is aware of how it may play out.

Secondly, Dreary Futures is a necessary step to exploring our setting as we iron out kinks in the system as we explore various other aspects of lore. Additionally, after this we have species-centric arcs that will have all kinds of different focuses.

Again, I just want to remind everyone we’ve only really been doing this for 7 months. It’s a realm that hasn’t been explored before and we also need to learn how to navigate it. I ask that everyone has patience as we move forward and adapt the narrative as we learn. 

Kindness and patience goes a long way for people volunteering to give you entertainment ❤️

Edited December 4, 2022 by Caelphon