Second consul/liaison slots possible remap

[Dreamix]

 

1. Move telecomms elsewhere. They see zero traffic outside of an engineer experimenting with them like once in 40 rounds or so, and antags messing with tcomms for no reason is a OOC issue. So tcomms do not need to be in the bridge, and can be literally anywhere else. Especially so since they take up so much space.
    
2. See the pic for the possible remap maybe idea suggestion. This is a quick mockup, but the general idea is there.
    
3. ???
    
4. Profit? I think the feedback for the double consul/liaison suggestion from a while ago was generally positive. Consular officers and corporate executives bring nice roleplay, and would hopefully bring more traffic to the bridge, which is always nice. The only problem with that suggestion, I think, was that it made them share the offices. <https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/15827>

 

 

 

[ReadThisNamePlz]

The bridge does not need more offices. 

It would be more fitting to have the Captains office take up a fraction of the size that T-comms is taking up right now. At current, the Captains office location makes it seem like they control the bridge and aides in the disconnect between XO and Captain. While the Captain is the head of the ship, the XO is meant to be the bridge commander in a way unless other situations call for the Captains attention. 

With that said, I'm not against having more consular officers or representatives, but I just think their offices do not need to be included within the bridge itself. I'd rather see the command conference room relocated and the offices placed by there in a hallway/near the Longbow as a whole. 

I can make a mockup this evening to help visualize what I mean if you'd like. 

[Sparky_hotdog]

To summarise my thoughts on this.

The Good:

• Moving T-comms. It's a relatively high-value target for antags given it's utility, and having it part of another high value target (the bridge) seems like poor design. Moving it elsewhere seems sensible to me. (I know there was talk of moving the AI, so there would be free, or otherwise, most of the starboard wing maintenance is unused I think)
• More consulars/liaisons. Both of these roles are always really fun to see, and having more in a round sounds super fun.

The Bad:

• Much like Read, I'd rather see other parts of the bridge moved to make room for them Maybe move the conference room to where the bar is now? I've never really seen the bridge bar used, and it just seems to discourage command from going to the real bar and interacting with the rest of the crew (Which thankfully most don't do).

[Hunt]

My quick two-cents:

I do not directly oppose having more consulars or representatives, however, I do not see the present need as we have a rough time already getting both of them on any given shift. I much rather the slot be contested and perhaps the player who did not win the slot at round-start played another department/character for the shift to event out department loads.

However, I could also see interesting RP on those once-in-a-blue-moon rounds where we do have two consulars and two representatives online, I do not care much either way.

 

I personally do not like the suggested remap and thus expansion of offices on the bridge. Plenty of recent PRs are serving to debloat the Horizon and I am a fan of that, I rather see us condense and make the ship more compact and thus driving the chances of players walking by each other and interacting rather than expanding any further. Alongside adding maintenance and this to areas for antag benefit.

The PR in question regarding the moving of tcomms and AI is here: 

This is not an attempt to draw attention away from this suggestion, just want to ensure everyone knows what areas are 'free' and where other things like tcomms are presently being conceptually moved.

 

I know Read is planning on expanding into the area that telecomms has left, I personally would like to see:

• Captains office/room move to where telecomms is
• Meeting room move to where current Captains office is, has a pretty scenery and gives star trek vibes being connected to the Bridge.
• Bridge Crewman to move to in-between the new meeting room and the new captains office.
• Consular/Rep offices to move to where the meeting room currently is
• Bridge storage to move to where the current Bridge Crewman locker room is.

 

In basis: I like the idea, I guess it could be neat having more slots, but this presently seems to bloat the bridge and I am not a fan of bloat. I rather move offices/switch things around.

 

[KingOfThePing]

Two consulars are very much reasonable, considering there are many factions that can be represented and present through the crew.

[Dreamix]

The concerns raised by @ReadThisNamePlz and @Hunt are valid, and I somewhat agree.

What if, it was just one liaison slot, but two consular slots? I think that would be interesting, and I think consulars are nicer in how many interesting dynamics they can create (PRA vs DPRA consuls, or Imperial vs Coalition, for example), compared to liaisons (where they all are SCC in the end). It would require putting a second consular office somewhere, but these are smaller than liaison's, so yeah.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

3 hours ago, Dreamix said:

The concerns raised by @ReadThisNamePlz and @Hunt are valid, and I somewhat agree.

What if, it was just one liaison slot, but two consular slots? I think that would be interesting, and I think consulars are nicer in how many interesting dynamics they can create (PRA vs DPRA consuls, or Imperial vs Coalition, for example), compared to liaisons (where they all are SCC in the end). It would require putting a second consular office somewhere, but these are smaller than liaison's, so yeah.

I'll have my mockup done soon. Two consulars would be dope. I don't think anyone would have an issue with that. I'd honestly rather turn the liaison office into a consulars office then put the actual liaison office into a smaller space inside the bridge, since they are an actual scc affiliate. That's the only way I'd be willing to add an extra office to the bridge, yknow? 

Give me a bit and I'll have something up. 

[Dreamix]

59 minutes ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

I'll have my mockup done soon. Two consulars would be dope. I don't think anyone would have an issue with that. I'd honestly rather turn the liaison office into a consulars office then put the actual liaison office into a smaller space inside the bridge, since they are an actual scc affiliate. That's the only way I'd be willing to add an extra office to the bridge, yknow? 

Give me a bit and I'll have something up. 

That sounds good to me, yeah. Liaison is like, actually trusted, as they are part of SCC, and I like to think they should act like advisors to command, or at least be welcome in the bridge (until they kicked out). Putting the liasion's office in the bridge would be fine I think.

Compared to consulars, who are kinda just there, and are only let into the bridge if command thinks they'd be non-problematic, if even at all.

[Carver]

I strongly prefer 2 and 2 - even if generally representatives are rarer, there's strong potential for some friendly corporate competition when multiple are present - there's no need to double up on Consular and neglect to double up Corporate Representatives. Otherwise I foresee a suggestion being revisited in the future when the role invariably picks up again in popularity.

I should probably also pose an argument against the "perhaps the player who did not win the slot at round-start played another department/character" thought, in that - if I want to play a character and the slot isn't open, chances are that I'll sit in the lobby until it opens or the next round comes up.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Carver
Additional thoughts

[EJJ]

I really prefer 2 consulars and 2 liasons. I've jumped between both roles (before my internet exploded and now I'm unable to play waaa). Both roles are faction roles and both roles tend to only really RP with Command and their factions. Adding more spots means more of an opportunity to have more people to RP with more folks.

+ Any liason/consular gimmicks you can think of. IPC NT/Heph/ZH rep and Zavod Dominian rep. Two solarian corpreps and two Gadpathurian CoC reps, etc, etc.

Again, I strongly prefer 2 for both roles. Remapping the bridge to fit them might be a pain in the butt, but there's a lot of space on third deck that hasn't been used and isn't mapped for ships to land in, I believe. Maybe cutting some of the fat from medical or moving things into the empty space on D3 might help with the space concerns?