Remove and/or Retcon the Leviathan

[La Villa Strangiato]

Allow me to cook.

1. Why does the SCC's civilian exploration/phoron-gathering vessel have a massive, experimental, fuck-off wave motion gun bolted to its port side? The in-character reasoning for this change was because the Horizon would shortly be traversing into the Badlands, accosted by various pirates, and the presence of a massive, experimental, fuck-off wave motion gun naturally deters violence. From a mechanical perspective, this does absolutely nothing in antag rounds (admittedly not canon) because the merc or raider shuttle can simply teleport next to the ship and physically board. In antag rounds, ship combat is pretty much non-existent. Obviously we can suspend our disbelief to a degree, because that's what one does when you create a collectively-written setting within the engine limits of SS13, but I do find it notable.

I am unsure if the rumours that off-ship antags being reworked to have a working shuttle are true or not. If true, there's no doubt that this would take an extraordinary amount of work and time for our coders and spriters, especially when events and on-ship content are priority. This is fine; I would much rather the product of volunteer work that I get for free take a long time and come out when it is finished. However, the point here is that there is no real need to begin charging the Leviathan in the first place, because using it on antags (except when someone steals the Intrepid I guess) is a moot point.

As well, I believe it was previously ruled that ships in opposition to the Horizon (such as the SFA or Izharshans) should not wantonly attack the Horizon, because it would technically be a violation of both self-antagging and "play a reasonable character who values their life" rules. Why would any sane, moderately intelligent person try to raid or attack a cruiser, even a civilian one, that has more firepower than you can shake a stick at? INB4 "they don't know about the Leviathan because it's top secret", it's sticking out of their port side. Half of it is visible from an eyeball distance away.

2. Because antags are a moot point, the Leviathan rarely, if ever, gets used in a round, and is a pain in the ass to use. It's not uncommon among engineering to simply allow the Leviathan's room to run on the main breaker, or run at minimal settings. This essentially means that nobody is going to fire the Leviathan in the round, regardless if anyone wants to.

For engineering laymen; If the Leviathan is being powered on the main breaker (i.e. directly from the ship power sources, the Supermatter or the Tesla), its SMES (the power storage that powers its area when charged) will not charge. The Leviathan requires its SMES to be at about 30% charge capacity to fire a single shot. It cannot drain directly from the main power grid.

30% may not sound like much, but the Leviathan has a way bigger power capacity than the usual 250kW in most SMESes. It drains a ton of power, and because of that it's impractical to use except when you're using giga hellchungus setups on the Supermatter and Tesla, at the same time. It's simply not worth the resources to fire on something like a cloud of dust or carp shoal.

You might say that we've had opportunities to use it in event rounds, but I recall the first "big" event round after the Leviathan was installed; the Dreary Futures finale with the Horizon fighting the SFA (Kobayashi Maru event doesn't count because it don't real). Everybody knew that the Leviathan was the instant-win button. I knew it, you knew it, the admins knew it, so they specifically directed Command that round not to fire the Leviathan at the SFA ship carrying a phoron bomb payload. The IC explanation was that the Leviathan might detonate the bomb, ergo it was necessary to dogfight the SFA without the weapon we had specifically been equipped with to fight off pirates with.

I can't for the life of me remember if the Leviathan has been used to devastating effect in other event rounds; Cold Dawn had brief ship combat at the beginning (RIP Bridge Crewman Ciel Latte). Other than that, I can count on one hand the times I remember the Leviathan actually being fired in a hostiles situation.

Which leads me to my next point.

3. The Leviathan, when it can be used, stomps on conflict. I recall some conversation in the relay discord or game OOC where it was discussed that if off-ship antags were given their own proper shuttle and made to do overmap battle with the Horizon, it would be easy enough for Command to shut their gimmick down by simply firing the wave motion gun at them. And from an IC perspective, why not? Why shouldn't we charge up the blicky and just obliterate every pirate that crosses our path?

From an OOC perspective, however, we all understand that this is bad. Much hay has been made over how it is easy for security and sometimes command to shut down an antag's gimmick by cutting right to the heart of the matter, that being "GTFO my ship or die". The Leviathan feels like a tacit encouragement of that. We obviously don't want hostile off-ships self-antagging, but what about times where it's entirely appropriate for people to engage with the Horizon aggressively? Should a potentially interesting story be abandoned just because we have a cool weapon? Are we forfeiting our chances at proper offship antags with the existence of a shipbreaking weapon?

To get back to Dreary Futures, imagine just how boring it would be to have a finale where the Horizon just shoots the other ship in half. I didn't particularly like Dreary Futures, but I understand that the point of a big ship battle is to have, well, a big ship battle. When the Leviathan can be fully charged by a few resourceful engineers when prepared for ship combat, it kind of makes its entire existence a blatant deus ex machina for someone wanting to be an antag.

I don't want to shit on the great amount of effort and time that clearly went into the Leviathan's development. I love its visual design, I love the sound design that goes into the slow hum of its engines starting up, I love the ship-rattling sound of it being fired. But I've only heard it like, three times, and I would rather not hear it if it meant that we could have actual tension in future ship combat.

So, what is there to be done? Below is me spitballing, because I am an ideas bitch before anything else.

1. Honestly, if the Leviathan was removed, it should probably just be retconned. There's no plausible IC explanation that the Horizon would remove their powerful fuck-off gun to make the ship even more vulnerable, unless the explanation was "lol the corpos hate u, have fun with your grau and longbow". Which also doesn't make sense given that the SCC wants to protect their best asset. Can you imagine the complaining on the relay?

2. Replace the Leviathan area with Patience Or a pool.

3. Someone (pretty sure it was t0l/bluntforce420) suggested replacing the Leviathan with some other form of artillery, which feels more logical but also feels more LARP-y, so I'm not a huge fan? I think as a civilian corporate ship, even one that is venturing into weird dangerous places, the Horizon already has one more gun than most offships have, so the bases are fairly covered. Considering we have three bridge crew slots anyway, you can have one bridgie piloting the ship, one firing the Grauwolf, and one firing the Longbow.

Post comments, opinions, and "please I'm Kyres and Matt I worked very hard on the Leviathan don't remove" below, but if you're mean to me remember this is who you're being mean to.

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by La Villa Strangiato
blah blah engineering sometimes charges the levi

[KingOfThePing]

too long didnt read

 

but I agree (unironically)

[MattAtlas]

39 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

The in-character reasoning for this change was because the Horizon would shortly be traversing into the Badlands, accosted by various pirates, and the presence of a massive, experimental, fuck-off wave motion gun naturally deters violence.

It isn't just about the Badlands - it's about the fact that the Spur in Aurora lore is a really dangerous place as of late. Between SFA and FSF remnants, pirates and etc., it's not just the Badlands that you have to consider but everywhere else too, or future endeavours. It's not all that unlikely that the Horizon will head into more unknown (and thus more dangerous) territory. It's the SCC's flagship and kind of the only hope of the galaxy in finding more sources of phoron, so to me it's always been fitting that it gets a weapon to match the importance of its mission. You could say that the Longbow and Grauwolf are enough, but that's not something I really agree with - mostly because I think we lack in the "cool things" factor. More on that later.

42 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Because antags are a moot point, the Leviathan rarely, if ever, gets used in a round, and is a pain in the ass to use.

It wasn't really made with the normal gameplay loop in mind is the thing. Back when I workshopped ship combat, there was an existential OOC problem that the Horizon might actually lose with the armaments it has: since the Horizon is so big, third party enemies naturally need really powerful guns, and with a good enough crew it's possible to totally cripple the Horizon if you know what you're doing. If it loses during an event like that, then that's a gigantic pain in the ass to deal with for lore writers. You'd have to retcon all of it, or adminbus in round and catch the consequences for it.

That's why the Leviathan was added, it's a safeguard against the Horizon straight up losing. Does that mean that it stomps on conflict? I don't think so. When we had the Orchard Moon event where the SFA crew fought the Horizon, I was one of them and we didn't get shitstomped. That's because the Leviathan is pretty hard to aim, but eventually you'll get it right. And the Horizon did get it right, they managed to hit us after an hour and a half of ship combat, and that was it for us.

47 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

And from an IC perspective, why not? Why shouldn't we charge up the blicky and just obliterate every pirate that crosses our path?

Like you said, it's the same principle you apply to antags. If there's someone turning their arm into a sword, you logically would shoot them in the head instantly, but we intentionally tell people to give leeway for the good of the round. We do the same with the Leviathan in normal rotation and in events, but I don't see why that's a problem.

51 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Are we forfeiting our chances at proper offship antags with the existence of a shipbreaking weapon?

Maybe. But I don't agree with removing things on a "what-if" basis. I don't like it when speculation is used as justification to remove things that have worked so far. For all the complaints I read about the Leviathan being an instant win weapon, the few times it's been put to the test it never was. It was never used to instantly end conflict (bar maybe a few of the first ship combat rounds where Captains got overeager and staff didn't notice), in events it didn't remove any of the stakes, and it definitely didn't make conflict worthless or whatever.

To bring back what I said earlier, my main issue with this is that the Horizon has a severe lack of cool-ness. A lot of it is really standard. We're supposed to be a flagship but the moment something outside of the norm gets added, something that's actually powerful and makes the Horizon feel like the beast it is, it's instantly questioned for being "too powerful" or "out of place" or "we're a civilian ship". The Leviathan's one of those few unique things that are unique to the Horizon, so I think that removing it would be a giant mistake for the atmosphere.

I'm probably biased, that's true, but I think anyone would be in my position.

[Fluffy]

1 hour ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

From a mechanical perspective, this does absolutely nothing in antag rounds (admittedly not canon) because the merc or raider shuttle can simply teleport next to the ship and physically board. In antag rounds, ship combat is pretty much non-existent

It can also be said that they board instead of shooting us down precisely because we have the massive fuck-off weapon they would be shot with otherwise

1 hour ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

INB4 "they don't know about the Leviathan because it's top secret", it's sticking out of their port side. Half of it is visible from an eyeball distance away.

You do not know the capabilities of a weapon just by looking at it

1 hour ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

I can count on one hand the times I remember the Leviathan actually being fired in a hostiles situation.

I believe this stems from the issue that we do not (yet) have overmap antagonists / ship to ship gamemode(s), which don't get me wrong is still an issue, but one that will get resolved as a side product of having said mode(s)

1 hour ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

And from an IC perspective, why not? Why shouldn't we charge up the blicky and just obliterate every pirate that crosses our path?

Because as per SOP it should be heavily weighted against other options; to latch back to the previous point, shooting a secret weapon is a good way to let any observer know what it's capable of, which means every time you shoot it, you can be giving away secret information about its capabilities

1 hour ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Honestly, if the Leviathan was removed, it should probably just be retconned. There's no plausible IC explanation that the Horizon would remove their powerful fuck-off gun to make the ship even more vulnerable, unless the explanation was "lol the corpos hate u, have fun with your grau and longbow".

It's an experimental weapon, if the experiment is over, the weapon can be removed and "goes back in the lab", so to say

 

[OK I seem to be unable to remove the pages, I just wanted a separator... Either way, continues on the next page]

 

33 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

it's always been fitting that it gets a weapon to match the importance of its mission.

It is however still a civilian ship, the importance of the mission doesn't alter that, usually if the mission really is that important and the place you need to go to perform it is that dangerous, you send the military, either alone or in support of the civilian side, you don't give the civilian side the best weapons and send them out, for a variety of reasons; civilian ships are also designed differently, so it would be hard to equip them with good weapons and have them operated; that is IRL of course, in universe it can be whatever we want it to be, but that's a point to consider

 

33 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

Back when I workshopped ship combat, there was an existential OOC problem that the Horizon might actually lose with the armaments it has: since the Horizon is so big, third party enemies naturally need really powerful guns, and with a good enough crew it's possible to totally cripple the Horizon if you know what you're doing. If it loses during an event like that, then that's a gigantic pain in the ass to deal with for lore writers. You'd have to retcon all of it, or adminbus in round and catch the consequences for it.

That's why the Leviathan was added, it's a safeguard against the Horizon straight up losing.

I personally still would prefer the later and it being a possibility, the horizon should be able to lose, it's an extension of the "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" philosophy, I do believe players should make the story of the Horizon and its occurrences, not have it narrated to

 

33 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

If there's someone turning their arm into a sword, you logically would shoot them in the head instantly

I think most people would run away from seeing such a thing, be paralyzed by fear, if armed shoot in the general direction to make such a monster hopefully go away; Those that would be able to fight effectively after having seen such a thing (which would be very few) should indeed be able to, and the mechanical element of that should not allow doing that to harm the good of the round

 

33 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

(bar maybe a few of the first ship combat rounds where Captains got overeager and staff didn't notice)

That it can do it at all, is the issue, I think

 

 

Apart from these points, I more or less agree with both sides, perhaps tuning it down so that it's still stronger than the other weapons we have, but not a (near) instant win button, could be the solution?

Edited July 5, 2023 by Fluffy
formatting

[Sneakyranger]

2 hours ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Allow me to cook.

Thou shalt not cook.

Anyway, I'm going to refrain from really commenting on the Leviathan's role in shutting or not shutting down ship v ship combat as I haven't been playing so much recently and while I have been present for the majority of ship v ship rounds, it's a narrow majority.

Instead, I'm just going to comment on something I do know about - or at least think I do.

 

2 hours ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

It drains a ton of power, and because of that it's impractical to use except when you're using giga hellchungus setups on the Supermatter and Tesla, at the same time.

This hasn't been true in my experience. The above quote might just be a bit of intentional hyperbole, but from what I remember setting the Tesla output to bypass with an average 20 ball setup is enough for a Leviathan shot around 00:40. I'd be interested if anyone were to do some objective tests, even if it were to prove me wrong, as it'd go a long way towards settling the matter.

I did read the rest of the post, but while I remain active in the community my finger hasn't been on the pulse of the server like it used to be. For what it's worth, I'd prefer to avoid any retcon. 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Sneakyranger

[La Villa Strangiato]

17 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

It wasn't really made with the normal gameplay loop in mind is the thing. Back when I workshopped ship combat, there was an existential OOC problem that the Horizon might actually lose with the armaments it has: since the Horizon is so big, third party enemies naturally need really powerful guns, and with a good enough crew it's possible to totally cripple the Horizon if you know what you're doing. If it loses during an event like that, then that's a gigantic pain in the ass to deal with for lore writers. You'd have to retcon all of it, or adminbus in round and catch the consequences for it.

I have a couple thoughts on this.

1. When you put it that way, it feels like the Leviathan runs the risk of becoming an artifact of our current state. Our current state is that ship combat is underutilized because not all the offships (hello, Kataphract vessel) are prepared for it, people are still getting used to it, and as I said, it is currently unviable in an antag round because of the nature of antag ships. In the hypothetical (and possibly distant) future where all overmap vessels are as combat-viable as they're meant to be in lore, how should the Horizon stack up against these ships when people are simply better at using the mechanics because they've had longer to use them? Once it becomes easier to train bridge crew in ship combat because more people have done it or had longer to understand the mechanics, the Leviathan inevitably becomes a bigger and bigger threat. This, I believe, is when the issues I brought up in my original post become more prominent.

2. Tee bee aytch I am not opposed to the Horizon losing. As a writer, and someone aware of the many headaches the animation industry endures when a big story beat changes, I obviously understand that it is a gigantic pain in the ass for the Horizon to get owned in a ship fight and be destroyed. People lose their characters, you have to write a scenario of "how do we go on?", you have to make new assets for wherever the crew goes next, etc.

But... I just don't see a lot of real, wide-ranging consequences for whenever the Horizon does Something Wacky:tm:. The negative consequences of Cold Dawn were that two characters were exiled from the Dinakk mountains for life and can never go home again, and the guy leading a building-looting got demoted (also a lot of people died). The negative consequences of the Dreary Futures finale was that a few people died but otherwise, Horizon major. Anecdata, but I barely see anyone talk about these very serious and possibly traumatic events.

I'm starting a tangent here, but the point is I don't think it would be bad if we as a community prepared for more negative consequences that have long-term effects. Maybe that means we'd need to be careful with who gets in command during canon events, or maybe admins need to emphasize that you should act like a person during canon events, or maybe that just means we need a backup plan for when the Horizon happens to go kaput.

36 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

When we had the Orchard Moon event where the SFA crew fought the Horizon, I was one of them and we didn't get shitstomped.

Matt you coded it

Omicega and DanseMacabre were the other crewmembers for the SFA ship; Danse has also been pretty set on ship combat before it was officially added, and while I'm not sure if he was the one playtesting most of it, he was definitely better than most of the bridge crew at it. As for Omi...

Jokes aside, coding the system that people are using does mean you understand it a lot better. The Horizon winning was also very much because of adminbus, because when it looked like the SFA were gaining the upper hand one of the targeting computers was taken offline to hamstring them. As I recall from observing the event, this allowed the Horizon to finally gain the upper hand and land a shot on them. If everyone was as knowledgeable about ship combat in the finale, would adminbus have been necessary?

1 hour ago, MattAtlas said:

Like you said, it's the same principle you apply to antags. If there's someone turning their arm into a sword, you logically would shoot them in the head instantly, but we intentionally tell people to give leeway for the good of the round.

Of course, but I also mentioned that the Leviathan feels like tacit encouragement of "GTFO my ship or die". You mentioned wanting to give the Horizon more cool things; what is a cool thing in a video game if not meant to be used? A good command player knows that the Leviathan is simply too powerful to bring out early, but all it takes is one bad OOC judgement call from a player to aim the blicky at the dinky pirate ship.

Mind you, I've always been a firm advocate that powerful features are best when they are moderated, not removed. We see this with the AI (though maybe that's not a good example as I would also remove that given the opportunity), we see this with the crew armoury, we see this with calling for help from allied offships around the sector. I do, however, have other reasons I think the Leviathan is a different beast, which I'll get to shortly.

1 hour ago, MattAtlas said:

For all the complaints I read about the Leviathan being an instant win weapon, the few times it's been put to the test it never was. It was never used to instantly end conflict (bar maybe a few of the first ship combat rounds where Captains got overeager and staff didn't notice), in events it didn't remove any of the stakes, and it definitely didn't make conflict worthless or whatever.

As mentioned before, I am of the mind that this is a matter of time. Currently we do not have any reason to use the Leviathan, which is one part of my argument. When ship combat is expanded, and when people learn more about how to shoot funny gun, the balance is going to start to swing, which leads into the Leviathan becoming just too damn powerful to use. The other other side of this argument is that depending on the scenario, the Leviathan may very well become cool, yet impractical. I remind you that the Longbow can do this (screenshot provided by my good friend ShakyJake):

You can scrap a pretty good amount of a ship with just asking a hangar tech to load the Longbow gun. No Leviathan key stuck in the Captain's office, no command swiping at terminals, no 30% SMES charge, just you, an HE shell, and the absence of God's mercy. When you consider the amount of damage that the regular guns can do, the Leviathan becomes somewhat superfluous.

However, that leads me to your final point...

1 hour ago, MattAtlas said:

To bring back what I said earlier, my main issue with this is that the Horizon has a severe lack of cool-ness. A lot of it is really standard. We're supposed to be a flagship but the moment something outside of the norm gets added, something that's actually powerful and makes the Horizon feel like the beast it is, it's instantly questioned for being "too powerful" or "out of place" or "we're a civilian ship". The Leviathan's one of those few unique things that are unique to the Horizon, so I think that removing it would be a giant mistake for the atmosphere.

I think ultimately why you and I disagree on this is because we have very different ideas of what's "cool".

For me, the coolest thing about the overmap is visiting planets, away sites, and talking to other ships. As a xenoarchaeologist, I can make up stories about the weird artifacts I find and exchange "theories" I made up on the fly with other science players when they exist. When I'm not science and I get to interact with the overmap, I might be a first responder helping out injured crewmembers from a wrecked ship, or an engineer repairing a sensor relay or helping a distress call. Hell, I might even get the chance to find canisters of phoron from a derelict, fight off greimorians, and generally have a fun little adventure with medium stakes.

On the ship itself, what I find "cool" is neat spaces to interact with other people. I keep harping on the forums about missing Patience and the pool and whatnot, but one of the things I liked about the Horizon when I first joined Aurora was that it felt like a lived-in space, in contrast to the Torch on Bay. You have canon residential spaces, comfortable lounges, green spaces, and recreational areas to make this feel like not just a workplace, but where everyone also lives.

The combat-ification of the Horizon kinda bugs me because it feels like we're focusing more on arcs where people shoot each other a bunch and it's hard to just play A Normal Guy, or A Normal Guy Who Didn't Sign Up For Huge Guns. Some people I have spoken to who played on Aurora when it was actually the Aurora have expressed to me that they feel like an enjoyable slice-of-life "civvie" aspect to the server is gone with the moving over to the Horizon, and stuff like the Leviathan magnifies this new vibe. Which makes sense to me, even though I like the Horizon, because I'm joining the war on chairRP... on the side of chairRP.

By contrast, Matt, your preferred content is more space opera. You like sweeping battles and tales of military heroism, with geopolitics and their sweeping consequences carefully assessed by a Greek chorus of woeful civilians as they contemplate the decisions of men and women far beyond their homestead. (This is maybe a little dramatic and not entirely accurate so forgive me if I missed your vibe a bit.) And you also like when guns make a cool sound and shoot bigly.

I am assuredly not opposed to action, but my preference for RP is quieter and more introspective. You could probably divide a lot of the playerbase down the same lines, and as much as I mog on "LARP", I don't think the opposite is entirely invalid.

[La Villa Strangiato]

1 hour ago, Fluffy said:

It can also be said that they board instead of shooting us down precisely because we have the massive fuck-off weapon they would be shot with otherwise

1 hour ago, Fluffy said:

Because as per SOP it should be heavily weighted against other options; to latch back to the previous point, shooting a secret weapon is a good way to let any observer know what it's capable of, which means every time you shoot it, you can be giving away secret information about its capabilities

1 hour ago, Fluffy said:

It's an experimental weapon, if the experiment is over, the weapon can be removed and "goes back in the lab", so to say

All good points.

1 hour ago, Fluffy said:

You do not know the capabilities of a weapon just by looking at it

Listen, if I'm Jane SFA and I see a cannon unlike anything I have seen before that looks like a xenomorph's [REDACTED] sticking out of the side of the ship, I feel like I can safely assume that shit hits hard.

If I am an Unathi pirate, however, that means we're going Klingon mode.

Apart from that I am in general agreement with your points, Fluffy.

17 minutes ago, Sneakyranger said:

This hasn't been true in my experience. The above quote might just be a bit of intentional hyperbole, but from what I remember setting the Tesla output to bypass with an average 20 ball setup is enough for a Leviathan shot around 00:40. I'd be interested if anyone were to do some objective tests, even if it were to prove me wrong, as it'd go a long way towards settling the matter.

I will test it today after I download Visual Studio.

[MattAtlas]

4 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

I have a couple thoughts on this.

1. When you put it that way, it feels like the Leviathan runs the risk of becoming an artifact of our current state. Our current state is that ship combat is underutilized because not all the offships (hello, Kataphract vessel) are prepared for it, people are still getting used to it, and as I said, it is currently unviable in an antag round because of the nature of antag ships. In the hypothetical (and possibly distant) future where all overmap vessels are as combat-viable as they're meant to be in lore, how should the Horizon stack up against these ships when people are simply better at using the mechanics because they've had longer to use them? Once it becomes easier to train bridge crew in ship combat because more people have done it or had longer to understand the mechanics, the Leviathan inevitably becomes a bigger and bigger threat. This, I believe, is when the issues I brought up in my original post become more prominent.

2. Tee bee aytch I am not opposed to the Horizon losing. As a writer, and someone aware of the many headaches the animation industry endures when a big story beat changes, I obviously understand that it is a gigantic pain in the ass for the Horizon to get owned in a ship fight and be destroyed. People lose their characters, you have to write a scenario of "how do we go on?", you have to make new assets for wherever the crew goes next, etc.

But... I just don't see a lot of real, wide-ranging consequences for whenever the Horizon does Something Wacky:tm:. The negative consequences of Cold Dawn were that two characters were exiled from the Dinakk mountains for life and can never go home again, and the guy leading a building-looting got demoted (also a lot of people died). The negative consequences of the Dreary Futures finale was that a few people died but otherwise, Horizon major. Anecdata, but I barely see anyone talk about these very serious and possibly traumatic events.

I'm starting a tangent here, but the point is I don't think it would be bad if we as a community prepared for more negative consequences that have long-term effects. Maybe that means we'd need to be careful with who gets in command during canon events, or maybe admins need to emphasize that you should act like a person during canon events, or maybe that just means we need a backup plan for when the Horizon happens to go kaput.

The first point here is balanced imo by the fact that the Leviathan can't (and shouldn't) always be used. It's kind of an ace in the hole with the rules as they are right now. That, and the fact that there's a mechanical limit to how fast it can be charged/used and how often means that it can't really always be used to instantly end a conflict.

The second one is a bit of a problem because if the Horizon loses in ship combat that usually means a lot of people dying... and that's a pain in the ass for the loremasters. You as a single individual might be alright with it, but generally events tend to have some failsafes for this reason. You also can't really apply the thinking that you would usually apply to a story here, because you're dealing with others' characters that they're very attached to. The solarian cruiser event for example would've been a total PR disaster and a mental health hazard if I hadn't intervened and fixed up some people. Guaranteed. None of us want to deal with that.

And, I don't know, in my opinion we haven't seen many consequences because the arcs we've had up until now haven't allowed for the kind of wide-ranging consequences you're talking about. Back then the whole system was still very experimental (both the guns and the events, really), but this one is more subjective in the end.

9 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Matt you coded it

I think you're overestimating how hard it is to use the ship combat system. It's the same reason why I kind of chuckle when people say that BCs don't have experience with it - you don't need experience with it to understand how it works, by designs. Gunnery is basically waiting until the ship is aligned with another ship and hitting the 'fire' button, while targeting the right place. The latter's the only really maybe hard part, but all it requires is some basic geographic understanding of direction. The only thing I might've known as a coder was that shooting the engines is a good idea, I didn't use any hidden techs or anything.

10 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Of course, but I also mentioned that the Leviathan feels like tacit encouragement of "GTFO my ship or die". You mentioned wanting to give the Horizon more cool things; what is a cool thing in a video game if not meant to be used? A good command player knows that the Leviathan is simply too powerful to bring out early, but all it takes is one bad OOC judgement call from a player to aim the blicky at the dinky pirate ship.

Mind you, I've always been a firm advocate that powerful features are best when they are moderated, not removed. We see this with the AI (though maybe that's not a good example as I would also remove that given the opportunity), we see this with the crew armoury, we see this with calling for help from allied offships around the sector. I do, however, have other reasons I think the Leviathan is a different beast, which I'll get to shortly.

Cool things don't have to always be used. The presence of cool things is also important for atmosphere. If the Horizon just has the cool thing, that's still something that's in the mind of people as an unique feature. That's the kind of atmosphere you want: people can see that they're on a very important place, because there are features that match the setting and show off the uniqueness of it.

12 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

As mentioned before, I am of the mind that this is a matter of time. Currently we do not have any reason to use the Leviathan, which is one part of my argument. When ship combat is expanded, and when people learn more about how to shoot funny gun, the balance is going to start to swing, which leads into the Leviathan becoming just too damn powerful to use. The other other side of this argument is that depending on the scenario, the Leviathan may very well become cool, yet impractical. I remind you that the Longbow can do this (screenshot provided by my good friend ShakyJake):

This is speculation. I don't think it'll turn out this way, you do - that's all there is there. Agree to disagree.

12 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

I remind you that the Longbow can do this (screenshot provided by my good friend ShakyJake):

You're not wrong but you should also remember that the Longbow has almost the same limitation as the Leviathan - it's one shot only! That's not very easy to hit. During the cruiser event we did get hit a few times in the guns by a longbow, but because of how big the ship was, it wasn't really a problem other than disabling the coilguns. For third parties, yeah, it's designed to be a near instant disabling hit, but if ships that are meant for ship combat are ever introduced, you can bet they'd be much larger than the current ones.

Another important thing is that shields completely stop bullets - yes, even Longbow bullets. A properly done hostile third party would likely have shields, and that makes the Longbow a lot less of a threat (you're meant to  take down the shields with the Grauwolf and then use the Longbow, conceptually). You could argue that this just makes you want to use the Leviathan more, and I'd honestly agree. I was planning a shield rework for this reason, but that's shifted into maybe autumn or winter as a timeframe. There are a lot of things on my hands.

15 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

By contrast, Matt, your preferred content is more space opera. You like sweeping battles and tales of military heroism, with geopolitics and their sweeping consequences carefully assessed by a Greek chorus of woeful civilians as they contemplate the decisions of men and women far beyond their homestead. (This is maybe a little dramatic and not entirely accurate so forgive me if I missed your vibe a bit.) And you also like when guns make a cool sound and shoot bigly.

I don't think this is entirely accurate. I think there are places for both. Anyone that has ever roleplayed with my characters knows how much I value quiet roleplay and chatting with characters for hours on end. I don't even have any military characters, and my main is a Venusian detective who can't hold a gun. But at the same time you can't really feed a narrative by constantly having comfy civilian arcs. There's space for science and discovery and whatever else, I think, but that monotony needs to be broken.

More importantly, I like coding things that I think are cool, and yes I do think big guns are cool, but one thing that I want to make EXTREMELY CLEAR is that I didn't code them hoping to turn the Horizon into a space soap opera, or hoping to add geopolitic LARP into the game, or hoping to add more military aspects to the game. That's something I don't want to hear at all.

[Fluffy]

2 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

The second one is a bit of a problem because if the Horizon loses in ship combat that usually means a lot of people dying... and that's a pain in the ass for the loremasters. You as a single individual might be alright with it, but generally events tend to have some failsafes for this reason. You also can't really apply the thinking that you would usually apply to a story here, because you're dealing with others' characters that they're very attached to. The solarian cruiser event for example would've been a total PR disaster and a mental health hazard if I hadn't intervened and fixed up some people. Guaranteed. None of us want to deal with that.

Does it, though? Residential has escape pods you can eject from, and for the people playing the round, they know the risk: If you play a canon round, you can die, you can avoid losing the characters you're attached to by playing others that you are not, even purpose-made ones

For how I see it, the reason we play canon event is to drive a story, not have it narrated to us, we are up to having characters die with the idea that they might help further the narrative and turn it one way or another, the prize is shaping the future of the narration, the stake is months of character building for a meaningless death

As long as players are properly informed about what the risk they will face (eg. "event intensity: doomsday" on the calendar), why would it be a PR disaster? You know the risks, you know the rewards, can't complain about it afterwards

I think around the forums, it was brought up in different threads that the story seems more like narrated to us, rather than shaped by us, and I think there's a good portion of players (pool time?) that would prefer to shape the future of the server lore, rather than have it narrated to them with little agency over it

 

2 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

Cool things don't have to always be used. The presence of cool things is also important for atmosphere. If the Horizon just has the cool thing, that's still something that's in the mind of people as an unique feature. That's the kind of atmosphere you want: people can see that they're on a very important place, because there are features that match the setting and show off the uniqueness of it.

Of course, but one of the points I think is being brought up is that the uniqueness isn't much fitting, it would (to make a comparison) be like saying that an unique house has a nuclear reactor in the basement, would it be unique? Of course, but would it be fitting for an house? No

The same thing goes for a super-uber experimental weapon that far upper-hands any other weapon, why isn't it installed on a TCFL cruiser? If it is that secret of a project (in its weight class), able to harness the power of energy itself, I would expect it to be under testing in some unknown area of the space, on a military ship, installed in a room with armed guards all around it, not on a mostly undefended civilian vessel that employs people of questionable loyalty to the corporation

 

I also do think, like Matt, that the two things can and should coexist, I do enjoy comfy chairRP rounds, and I also do enjoy "everything is going to shit, all able hands grab a weapon or the closest thing to it" ones, I think we can have both and they enhance the fun of each other

[Carver]

Prefacing my comment: I have a fairly neutral opinion on the Leviathan - I (on a level of personal taste) dislike it's design, preferring another weapon, but I wouldn't care if said weapon was just as powerful either way.

But, I heavily dislike this 'civilian vessel' argument. Why wouldn't a civilian vessel of such important be well-armed, particular the flagship of the SCC - perhaps the single most controversial faction within the greater lore? I can well tell you, in a setting where pirates and/or military deserters are rampant and a plethora of anti-corporate terrorist groups float around, you'd want to be better armed than the Santa María. The prized pig of the SCC shouldn't be defenseless, and for antagonists it can be assumed that the vessels of boarders approached via more stealthy means and ship designs (let's not overlook that the Horizon's loaded with blind spots). I don't feel the ship has been truly militarized by the Leviathan's addition whatsoever, unless one is looking toward Hangar Technicians becoming munitions loaders (something I personally quite dislike), rather it's the same vessel it was before except it's no longer at the complete mercy of any pirate with a half-passable ship.

If perhaps one wanted to make the Horizon more vulnerable, then I would argue to increase the costs to fire the Leviathan and truly put a drain on the ship to do so - so it becomes more of a meaningful risk to utilize it, even when it's needed.

[Fluffy]

32 minutes ago, Carver said:

Why wouldn't a civilian vessel of such important be well-armed, particular the flagship of the SCC - perhaps the single most controversial faction within the greater lore? I can well tell you, in a setting where pirates and/or military deserters are rampant and a plethora of anti-corporate terrorist groups float around, you'd want to be better armed than the Santa María. The prized pig of the SCC shouldn't be defenseless, and for antagonists it can be assumed that the vessels of boarders approached via more stealthy means and ship designs (let's not overlook that the Horizon's loaded with blind spots).

You would be generally right, the issue I see is that it would put into question other things:

Why would the SCC employ people of questionable loyalty in its most precious vessel, like Guwans, ex criminals, dregs and Himeans that have an anti-corporate sentiment, DPRA Tajara, ex EE, etc.?
Why wouldn't everyone who's left be mindshield implanted, to ensure they cannot be manipulated?
Why wouldn't the SCC train everyone to use small arms to defend such an important vessel?
Why not employ mostly IPCs, that by their very nature cannot go against their directives?
Why would it leave its most precious vessel with obvious security design flaws?
And why would they send it alone in dangerous territories without one or more escort vessels?
Why wouldn't they have security personnel armed 24/7 patrolling the decks of such a critical ship, with the order on the line of "if you see anyone suspicious, it's surrender or die"?
Why wouldn't the rest of the crew be armed with a sidearm too, to defend this critical asset?
Why would it be equipped with subpar weapons in the armories, instead of automatic rifles and LMGs?
Why does it not have automatic turrets installed at every docking arm, so that unauthorized people cannot dock and sneak in quietly?
Why would the dock controllers allow anyone to open it, without authentication?
Why is is a peasy cruiser, instead of a dreadnough class?
etc. etc.

If we look at it from this perspective, a lot of other things would start to look out of place, perhaps even the ship being a civilian (instead of a paramilitary) one itself as a concept, if we are to employ the idea that this ship is that much important

With the perspective that the mission is important, but the ship itself isn't really that much important to the SCC, a lot of things makes sense again, and the presence of the leviathan with the current lore about it looks kind of out of place

 

Having it be a less powerful, not secret uberweapon, on the other hand, would make more sense (at least to me) and also see it more used, which as a consequence gives engineers more work they can do.

To address the uniqueness of said weapons, aka "why don't other ships have it?": Because it sucks a lot of power, we have a supermatter crystal that's (afaik) made of pure, solidified phoron, that no other ship has, we can afford the power to shoot it, other ships cannot afford that; we are designed for long-term missions away from friendly ports, so having a weapon that requires no ammunition makes sense, other ships are designed to work inside a supply chain or in friendly space, where they can just reload whatever ammos they shot, so they do not have a need to have such a weapon + expensive power generation engine installed, and so on

[La Villa Strangiato]

10 hours ago, Fluffy said:

Why would the SCC employ people of questionable loyalty in its most precious vessel, like Guwans, ex criminals, dregs and Himeans that have an anti-corporate sentiment, DPRA Tajara, ex EE, etc.?
Why wouldn't everyone who's left be mindshield implanted, to ensure they cannot be manipulated?
Why wouldn't the SCC train everyone to use small arms to defend such an important vessel?
Why not employ mostly IPCs, that by their very nature cannot go against their directives?
Why would it leave its most precious vessel with obvious security design flaws?
And why would they send it alone in dangerous territories without one or more escort vessels?
Why wouldn't they have security personnel armed 24/7 patrolling the decks of such a critical ship, with the order on the line of "if you see anyone suspicious, it's surrender or die"?
Why wouldn't the rest of the crew be armed with a sidearm too, to defend this critical asset?
Why would it be equipped with subpar weapons in the armories, instead of automatic rifles and LMGs?
Why does it not have automatic turrets installed at every docking arm, so that unauthorized people cannot dock and sneak in quietly?
Why would the dock controllers allow anyone to open it, without authentication?
Why is is a peasy cruiser, instead of a dreadnough class?

I can actually answer a few of these with in-lore stuff.

1. Plenty of corporations IRL employ convicted felons, anarchists, communists, and former competitors. In the case of Guwan and Gawgaryn, it is explicit that NanoTrasen preys on them because they have no social network to help them fall back on when they become Guwan. The bottom line is the bottom line; if corporations think they can exploit you for money, they will do so. In the case of Einstein Engines, it's not unreasonable to assume that SCC corps try to headhunt Einstein talent to steal away any advantage they can from their competitor.

2. Presumably if they could they would. It likely takes a lot of money to pay surgeons to implant everyone with a mindshield implant, however, and some people (like Dominians, Unathi, and Skrell in particular) might not be so keen on getting brain surgery or a funny little implant in their head that could potentially malfunction. Having something to "protect" your thoughts makes being employed with the SCC less attractive to people.

3. Time, money, and resources. Also, danger. Plenty of Americans are moderately trained in the use of small arms; this does not mean that they have not accidentally discharged their gun and blown off/blown a hole through their own leg/dong/vag/hand/foot, accidentally shot someone else, or pulled a gun and fired on someone in the heat of the moment. Plus, in a lot of scenarios, pulling a gun on someone trying to attack you usually just means you get your gun pulled away and you get shot in the head. It's safer that a ship's security have several well-trained people who can (allegedly) handle a gun and use it appropriately rather than having a bunch of people with various states of stability try and fumble a derringer.

4. IPCs are expensive, Zavodskoi, Zeng-Hu, and Hephaestus work with peoples that are very anti-synthetic by nature (Dominia, Nralakk, and Izweski in order) and they want their strongest organic soldiers on the ship as well. Also, IPCs can totally go against their "directives"? They're not lawed. You're thinking of station-bounds.

5. This is a concession for antag gameplay.

6. Well, we had an escort vessel...

7. Also a concession for antag gameplay, but another answer is that this makes a civilian ship uncomfortable. There's a reason that the default state of the ship is "don't have your weapons visible and out, and don't be wearing your plate carrier around like a schmuck". Also, no matter how much of a trained epic killer you are, many, many organizations prefer not escalating a potentially dangerous situation. It's why even SWAT teams say "Get on the ground, now!" People, even trained epic killers, are generally averse to blood and dying.

8. See point #3.

9. Uh laser carbines are not subpar, lmfao. If you're asking about the crew armories, these are generally not used except in serious danger cases where the entirety of security is FUBAR.

10. There are turrets at several important locations on the exterior of the ship. Part of this is an antag concession, but another part of this is money that a ship in distress might need to dock quickly.

11. Bay used to have this. I think it would be cool to port it, actually.

12. Erm actually it's a venator-class. (I dunno. Nicer atmosphere, probably.)

There are plenty of IC reasons why we're not the SCCV Gigachungus Hellship, but a lot of it boils down to money, time, and resources. Besides, I should be asking why our sensors suddenly take two minutes to scan a destination when previously they didn't do that.

12 hours ago, Carver said:

But, I heavily dislike this 'civilian vessel' argument. Why wouldn't a civilian vessel of such important be well-armed, particular the flagship of the SCC - perhaps the single most controversial faction within the greater lore? I can well tell you, in a setting where pirates and/or military deserters are rampant and a plethora of anti-corporate terrorist groups float around, you'd want to be better armed than the Santa María. The prized pig of the SCC shouldn't be defenseless, and for antagonists it can be assumed that the vessels of boarders approached via more stealthy means and ship designs (let's not overlook that the Horizon's loaded with blind spots). I don't feel the ship has been truly militarized by the Leviathan's addition whatsoever, unless one is looking toward Hangar Technicians becoming munitions loaders (something I personally quite dislike), rather it's the same vessel it was before except it's no longer at the complete mercy of any pirate with a half-passable ship.

We are well-armed. We have the Longbow...

...the Grauwolf, and the Canary with its Francisca. We also have a whole security team, and two armories full of armor and weapons. Even if the crew armoury does not have good weapons, they are regardless able to kill someone. There's pretty much never been a time where the Horizon can't roflstomp an antag if they really put their mind to it (and I find more often than not that people are lenient!), and the climax of Cold Dawn had someone PEAC'ing an Adhomian tank.

I think the Horizon is sufficiently protected for the job it is designed to do, which is exploring, looking for phoron, and finding cool stuff for the corps to ruin. We're simply not meant to go up against a battlefleet (or an SFA corvette, whatever). If that happens, we run away.

I'll let my points and Matt's points stand on their own, here (sorry I basically called you a LARPist, Matt). Let me restate;

19 hours ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

The combat-ification of the Horizon kinda bugs me because it feels like we're focusing more on arcs where people shoot each other a bunch and it's hard to just play A Normal Guy, or A Normal Guy Who Didn't Sign Up For Huge Guns. Some people I have spoken to who played on Aurora when it was actually the Aurora have expressed to me that they feel like an enjoyable slice-of-life "civvie" aspect to the server is gone with the moving over to the Horizon, and stuff like the Leviathan magnifies this new vibe. Which makes sense to me, even though I like the Horizon, because I'm joining the war on chairRP... on the side of chairRP.

 

[Fluffy]

12 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

[snip]

There are plenty of IC reasons why we're not the SCCV Gigachungus Hellship, but a lot of it boils down to money, time, and resources. Besides, I should be asking why our sensors suddenly take two minutes to scan a destination when previously they didn't do that.

I feel like you missed the point that I was trying to convey, which can perhaps be summarized as: If the vessel is so critical and important, there would be no spared expenses, less than the best people that the universe has to offer would not be employed on this ship (the SCC would still employ them, as you answered, but not on a vessel of such importance), etc.

Your answers are mostly correct in a general sense, but I think they miss the point: If the ship was so critical for the SCC to justify the installation of an experimental gigaturboweapon, other expenses would not be spared far before it, they would not cheap out on such a critical asset if it were critical enough to justify said installation (and risks that comes with having it outside a controlled environment), and even more so after having installed such a secret project on the ship

 

Spoiler

23 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

The bottom line is the bottom line; if corporations think they can exploit you for money, they will do so.

You would not put cheap exploited workers of very questionable loyalty, known to go against the law already, on your most precious and critical asset, that would be like having your only aircraft carrier ran by a penal unit of undisciplined felons

 

25 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

In the case of Einstein Engines, it's not unreasonable to assume that SCC corps try to headhunt Einstein talent to steal away any advantage they can from their competitor.

Probably the same thing, would you risk having an, eg., USSR former soldier work in your Area 51? Probably not, the risk of it being a spy or messing with your project(s) is just not worth the risk

 

29 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

It likely takes a lot of money to pay surgeons to implant everyone with a mindshield implant

You have surgeons on staff every shift, you pay them the same if they work or don't work, also the implantation of eg. a tracking implant is a minutes-long process done in the Brig that doesn't require a medical qualification, presumably the mindshield would likewise be the same(?)

 

31 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

some people (like Dominians, Unathi, and Skrell in particular) might not be so keen on getting brain surgery or a funny little implant in their head that could potentially malfunction

Sure, and why would you want them in this super critical asset? Send them to some secondary, "business as usual" facility, you would keep the best people you have on your most important asset, it's not like the SCC is short of people to recruit

 

34 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

IPCs are expensive

They are used in mining operations, one of the most dangerous jobs there is, which suggests they really aren't that expensive for a corporation; we have on-ship people that apparently have multiple ones as house servitude, suggesting they aren't much more expensive than a car for a person in proportion

 

36 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Also, IPCs can totally go against their "directives"? They're not lawed. You're thinking of station-bounds.

I think you're probably thinking of rampancy, which is fairly rare, otherwise, directives must be archieved as per the positronic wiki article ("Directives can be loosely translated as “objectives” and outline a series of outcomes that need to be achieved."), also IPCs can technically be "hard lawed" (same paragraph as the quote), it's just uncommon to do so.

It is also stated in the IPC wiki article that "[...] these positronics are wholly averse to harming their owners in any way shape or form, or conducting themselves in a manner that would place themselves in a negative light."

 

44 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

There's a reason that the default state of the ship is "don't have your weapons visible and out, and don't be wearing your plate carrier around like a schmuck". Also, no matter how much of a trained epic killer you are, many, many organizations prefer not escalating a potentially dangerous situation.

While generally true, that is what "surrender or die" means; imagine for example sneaking in in the aforementioned Area 51 and be found inside the main hangars/underground facility/whatever is there, do you think they would try to negotiate with you? Of course not, at best they would give you a chance to surrender (and spend however many years in prison afterwards), at worst they would just start shooting you as an intruder in a critical facility

And, if you're armed? I doubt you'd be given the option to surrender, it would be a kill on sight situation

 

48 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Uh laser carbines are not subpar, lmfao. If you're asking about the crew armories, these are generally not used except in serious danger cases where the entirety of security is FUBAR.

We have burst rifles instead of automatic rifles, I am not sure where you read I was talking about laser carabines (?), but the point still stands: You would have the best equipments money can buy if you are in such a critical vessel, with probably multiple backups in case you need more

 

50 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

that a ship in distress might need to dock quickly.

They can be turned off just as quickly (in theory, we have an AI, in theory...), you would also not compromise the safety of your most important ship because someone might need to dock in case of emergency in general

 

52 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Besides, I should be asking why our sensors suddenly take two minutes to scan a destination when previously they didn't do that.

It always took that amount, your characters just misremember how long it takes because memory of the past tends to compress the timescale  

 

[Carver]

13 hours ago, Fluffy said:

You would be generally right, the issue I see is that it would put into question other things:

Why would the SCC employ people of questionable loyalty in its most precious vessel, like Guwans, ex criminals, dregs and Himeans that have an anti-corporate sentiment, DPRA Tajara, ex EE, etc.?
Why wouldn't everyone who's left be mindshield implanted, to ensure they cannot be manipulated?
Why wouldn't the SCC train everyone to use small arms to defend such an important vessel?
Why not employ mostly IPCs, that by their very nature cannot go against their directives?
Why would it leave its most precious vessel with obvious security design flaws?
And why would they send it alone in dangerous territories without one or more escort vessels?
Why wouldn't they have security personnel armed 24/7 patrolling the decks of such a critical ship, with the order on the line of "if you see anyone suspicious, it's surrender or die"?
Why wouldn't the rest of the crew be armed with a sidearm too, to defend this critical asset?
Why would it be equipped with subpar weapons in the armories, instead of automatic rifles and LMGs?
Why does it not have automatic turrets installed at every docking arm, so that unauthorized people cannot dock and sneak in quietly?
Why would the dock controllers allow anyone to open it, without authentication?
Why is is a peasy cruiser, instead of a dreadnough class?
etc. etc.

I'll try to address these where I can individually without piecemealing the quote: I agree, I'd actually quite like if we had stricter character requirements for the sake of immersion considering many of these are effectively 'antagonistic factions' in a megacorporate setting. Mindshield implants are, functionally, designed to prevent Skrellian espionage - the janitor doesn't know anything of real value so there's no inherent value in mindshielding them - any other effects it prevents are generally a gameplay mechanic related to non-canon antagonists such as borers, cultists, vampires and so forth. I do agree with you on the small arms front, though it's hard to argue when even security is woefully underequipped (and often undertrained given many of the characters I see) in the context of contesting Solarian Marines, but that's a fine gameplay concession for round-to-round when the Leviathan is almost solely an event tool that antagonists have to choose to bring into a gimmick (and often inform an administrator ahead of time). IPCs are not infallible, in fact they present a massive target for terrorist groups such as the off-shoot of the Trinary that wipe and brainwash them, and render your vessel incredibly vulnerable to EM Pulse weaponry. I'm unsure about design flaws besides the lack of turrets about, this map is inherently a lot more protected than most maps I've seen in regard to crucial areas (which themselves, annoyingly, are often protected by seemingly unspoken rules that new antagonists often run into). How do you intend on the escort vessels keeping up with the experimental BSD that outpaces every other vessel? Security is armed, and should be patrolling quite often even though the players are quite lazy and only take their duties seriously when they seek muh valids on antagonist roles they personally dislike. The rest of the crew I'd argue should have disruptors, but circling back to point one, while I'd like the crew armed I wouldn't trust this ragtag bunch of terrorist sympathizers with even a cap gun - if we had stricter crew requirements then I'd be supportive of this. I don't know about you but the reason we traditionally used primarily energy weaponry in the armoury was because of windows - you are significantly more likely to ventilate your vessel with ballistic firearms, which isn't a problem for Solarian Marines boarding enemy vessels with voidsuits and magnetic boots, but is for the crew - and I've always pushed for a return to a near-solely energy-based armoury with a handful of shotguns since the windows can take buckshot much more safely at a distance. I agree that unauthorized people shouldn't be able to dock, personally I'd suggest docking codes for this, as for automatic turrets let's circle back to the energy argument once more and you'll see my thought on this (AKA, use laser rifle turrets). Circle back to my prior answer. Cruisers have significantly lower logistical overhead (important when you're using phoron) and are decidedly less vulnerable to, for example, meteor showers - a dreadnought may be unable to travel through an asteroid field entirely, for example.

The Leviathan is there for one reason, it's there to put Solarian vessels out of commission no matter their size if it absolutely has to (and as a bonus it can scare off anyone else [if it needs to]). The Longbow, Grauwolf and Canary wouldn't do shit to a properly maintained and manned Solarian cruiser (something we have thus far yet to face in an event). No other faction really needs such an answer perhaps barring the Federation (who are never going to attack the Horizon), but Sol and it's Diadochi indeed pose a very real threat to the Horizon and are more than willing to act on this threat. I cannot fathom being willing to work on a vessel that cannot defend itself, especially in the places that the Horizon travels.

1 hour ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

We are well-armed. We have the Longbow...

...the Grauwolf, and the Canary with its Francisca. We also have a whole security team, and two armories full of armor and weapons. Even if the crew armoury does not have good weapons, they are regardless able to kill someone. There's pretty much never been a time where the Horizon can't roflstomp an antag if they really put their mind to it (and I find more often than not that people are lenient!), and the climax of Cold Dawn had someone PEAC'ing an Adhomian tank.

I think the Horizon is sufficiently protected for the job it is designed to do, which is exploring, looking for phoron, and finding cool stuff for the corps to ruin. We're simply not meant to go up against a battlefleet (or an SFA corvette, whatever). If that happens, we run away.

I'll let my points and Matt's points stand on their own, here (sorry I basically called you a LARPist, Matt). Let me restate;

 

Include what I said above on the Leviathan to cover my thoughts on the Longbow (and remember that historically, Longbowmen were utilized en masse so the name isn't precisely inspiring by itself) and the other little piddy anti-small pirate tools. The security team is woefully uninspiring and is generally poorly equipped to handle any true Solarian boarding, thus far we've fought the dregs of Diadochi states, a very small Elyran SF Squad (which was fought with the help of the aforementioned Solarian mercenaries) and a piddly shit-sized squad of underarmed DPRA supported by rural villagers armed with pitchforks and perhaps muskets (I didn't look too closely to see if the villagers had firearms). As for PEACing an Adhomian Tank, that was both a light tankette and a bug with the flaps prevented it from killing the PEAC user with a rocket it fired back directly at them that was precisely on target and would have hit. A more proper tank wouldn't have been so nearly as threatened, and tanks by doctrine are generally not designed to act alone but rather in groups which this one had not - it was poorly supported by a total of 3 soldiers and a mob of mountain-dwelling rednecks. It was actually to the Horizon's tactical disadvantage in choosing to retreat instead of fighting back, even if they had incurred great losses in manpower to the Geist.

Running away is not exactly feasible, as the BSD spooling up is no instant matter and on the grounds of flight by thruster - the Horizon wins no races there. It only makes sense to have a weapon capable of contesting your faction's greatest enemy, and scaring off any lesser idiots who think it's wise to poke the SCC's prized pig. The Leviathan by itself cannot beat a battlefleet, but it can put the flagship of that battlefleet out of commission before the Horizon itself is destroyed by the myriad of supporting vessels - better odds than being armed with the equivalent of a spear (or I guess if we're being funny, a bow, ha) against an entire military force. Doubly if, perhaps, the destruction of the enemy's flagship causes a break in the enemy's morale and leads to a retreat (or more importantly, an opportunity for the Horizon to flee).

When you cannot run away, you stand your ground. Exploration is no safe matter, defer to Star Trek TOS where the Enterprise is armed and willing to wipe out entire planetary civilizations if it so needed to (General Order 24), the very series that so inspired this precise form of Sci Fi media. I would not work on the Horizon myself if it were armed any less than it is. As for antags, I don't think we're remotely lenient with them to begin with and tend to think they're quite underarmed and underpowered (rather than security being too well armed, tho I'd prefer a switch to pure energy weapons like I said before), but this is another subject of debate to be had so I'll leave it in small text.

[Fluffy]

4 hours ago, Carver said:

Mindshield implants are, functionally, designed to prevent Skrellian espionage - the janitor doesn't know anything of real value so there's no inherent value in mindshielding them

To my understanding (lore guys correct me if I'm wrong), the mindshield prevents you from being manipulated, not only from psionic powers; the Janitor might not know anything of real value, but manipulating him to get some left around documents, take some pictures of important things, and so on is a perfect corporate espionage strategy, which is even more effective if you employ underpaid quasi-slave labor (another reason you want the people that operate something to be at least equally reliable to the importance that thing they operate is)

4 hours ago, Carver said:

IPCs are not infallible, in fact they present a massive target for terrorist groups such as the off-shoot of the Trinary that wipe and brainwash them

The positronic brain, to my understanding, can be proben to know the directives/laws that are imprinted, plus can be wiped at owner's will (for owned IPCs, of course), I would imagine if the SCC were to go down that route, those IPCs would be wiped and re-programmed before boarding, and would also always stay onboard the ship

4 hours ago, Carver said:

I'm unsure about design flaws besides the lack of turrets about, this map is inherently a lot more protected than most maps I've seen in regard to crucial areas

The ship can easily be vented, given the openness of it, there's sparsely any "security" door (or how those things that shuts the side of the Armory are called, shutters maybe?), we have external walls that are just standard windows you can pierce through with some swings of an axe, electrical and air ducts are unprotected, maintenance tunnels have no CCTV cameras, the cameras are locked down anyways, there's little movement sensors, there's no IFF area sensors (like what the secHUD does, but checks if you are authorized to be in that area, and if not, it triggers something), the AI is not tasked to protect the ship and help enforce the regulations, possible entry areas (docks) are unmonitored, we have a single layer of external hull, there's no CIWS-like system, most machines don't require any authentication to be operated, (to my knowledge) nothing uses biometric authentication (as long as you steal the correct ID, you can access everything, all you need is to steal a pilot badge and walk into the CIC to fly the ship into a sun/planet), etc.

4 hours ago, Carver said:

How do you intend on the escort vessels keeping up with the experimental BSD that outpaces every other vessel?

To my understanding, and according to the wiki page of the Horizon, the BSD is a backup plan in case we run out of fuel, not regularly used:

"The Horizon is a first-generation hybrid, meaning it is constructed with both a Warp and Bluespace Drive. Implemented by the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate as a fallback method in the event that the ship is unable to acquire phoron for refueling, the aforementioned reactors of the Horizon will be capable of outputting enough power to fuel its warp counterparts."

For the speed of the BSD, I am not aware of it being any faster than other ships, can you give me a link where it says so?

If I understand it right, according to the wiki page on bluespace drives, the larger your ship is the more powerful (and I guess thus, faster?) your BSD is:

"[...] Limited by the size of any given vessel, Bluespace Drives vary in their abilities depending on their design - with only incredibly powerful ones reserved for flagships of the respective nations within the Orion Spur."

4 hours ago, Carver said:

you are significantly more likely to ventilate your vessel with ballistic firearms, which isn't a problem for Solarian Marines boarding enemy vessels with voidsuits and magnetic boots, but is for the crew

We shoot lethal polymer rounds from our ballistic weapons, I think that's because they, unlike armor piercing ones, do not breach walls

4 hours ago, Carver said:

a dreadnought may be unable to travel through an asteroid field entirely, for example.

We know that, canonically, ships like the Guhammer (or what was the name of that ship that went to fight the SRF) can resist being shot at by a cruiser cannon barrage without even having the shields going down, and we know on the Horizon the shields (when they're up) negates any meteor we get out way, I think it would be safe to assume this wouldn't be a problem

4 hours ago, Carver said:

The Leviathan is there for one reason, it's there to put Solarian vessels out of commission no matter their size if it absolutely has to (and as a bonus it can scare off anyone else [if it needs to]). The Longbow, Grauwolf and Canary wouldn't do shit to a properly maintained and manned Solarian cruiser (something we have thus far yet to face in an event). No other faction really needs such an answer perhaps barring the Federation (who are never going to attack the Horizon), but Sol and it's Diadochi indeed pose a very real threat to the Horizon and are more than willing to act on this threat. I cannot fathom being willing to work on a vessel that cannot defend itself, especially in the places that the Horizon travels.

Of course, but this presumes that the ship cannot defend itself, which in my idea of how the Leviathan would fit better isn't the case, it would still be a weapon able to pierce through shields and deliver devastation, just not a "we have decided we had enough, fuck you" one, neither a secret super weapon project; just a strong energy-based weapon, like the laser rifles you talked about, but for ships, we can even make it do something cool like traversing any window/shield to "detonate" inside the enemy ship, in that sense

4 hours ago, Carver said:

As for antags, I don't think we're remotely lenient with them to begin with and tend to think they're quite underarmed and underpowered (rather than security being too well armed, tho I'd prefer a switch to pure energy weapons like I said before), but this is another subject of debate to be had so I'll leave it in small text.

I do agree with you here (minus the only laser weapons, I love the good old bullet based rifles), and I am a strong proponent of the idea of rounds with powerful antagonists or pure RP rounds alternating in some ratio that balance the relaxing chairRP rounds (which I enjoy in proportion) with the chaotic, bloodbath "everything is going to shit" ones (which I also enjoy in proportion)

[WickedCybs]

The thing about the Leviathan that presents a challenge to me is that in the rare ship to ship events it has to be considered that it may just completely end an event unless it is restricted and that point I would ask what the point of even having it is. Stuff like "there's a phoron nuke on that cruiser" is an okay reason, but in general I really can't see a reason why the Levi wouldn't be prepped right away in any serious fight. Accuracy may be mentioned as something that compensates for this, but it is about as accurate as anything else given it is entirely dependent on the pilot and shooter.

More effective to me would be a third weapon that isn't a grauwolf since at the moment, the best weapon in the Horizon's ship-to-ship arsenal is arguably the Longbow and having two would mean more shots fired. It's also the only real weapon worth considering at all if the Horizon was to face off against a peer rather than the small third-party ships.

[WhatsUpBrotendo]

On 07/07/2023 at 02:34, Fluffy said:

To my understanding (lore guys correct me if I'm wrong), the mindshield prevents you from being manipulated, not only from psionic powers

The only lore I can find regarding mindshields is from this page https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Solarian_Security_and_Law#The_Solarian_Interstellar_Intelligence_Bureau

Quote

Of these two the skrellian branch is the larger and more developed one thanks to the greater amount of time that humanity has been in contact with the skrell. The skrellian branch is widely-known throughout the Bureau for its creative approaches to hiding classified information from a psionically-capable species. Bureau facilities (and some facilities that are not affiliated with them at all) are generally aluminium-lined to prevent nlom field interactions within classified areas such as interrogation rooms, and the skrellian branch was responsible for the creation of the first practical mindshield shortly after first contact. While similar corporate mindshields exist, Bureau mindshields are highly-classified and exclusive to the agency itself. Rumor has it that they are capable of turning the psionic energies of a skrell onto the skrell themselves but they, like much of the Bureau, are shrouded in rumors and falsehoods.

(The part about the nlom and aluminium is inaccurate, in case anyone else read that bit)

Mindshields prevent psionic interaction mechanically, so that's definitely a thing. I can't say whether or not mindshields used by the corporations are specifically designed to prevent Skrell espionage since I can't find anything else on the wiki about it. Considering its predecessor was the loyalty implant I think mindshields replaced them with the intention of allowing command some leeway for antag gimmicks.

As for the main point of the thread, I'm not a fan of the Leviathan as it is currently. I agree with Fluffy in making the Leviathan a less powerful and less secretive* artillery piece. That said, I'm not actually sure how powerful the Leviathan is meant to be. I've had it described to me as a planet cracker, or that it could cleave massive ships in two, and other claims that might just be an exaggeration.

*as in its existence isn't a big secret, the mechanics behind it being secret makes sense still since it's an experimental weapon.

 

Edited July 9, 2023 by WhatsUpBrotendo
clarified something

[GeneralCamo]

On 05/07/2023 at 19:01, MattAtlas said:

The second one is a bit of a problem because if the Horizon loses in ship combat that usually means a lot of people dying... and that's a pain in the ass for the loremasters.

We have escape pods and shuttles for this honestly. The Horizon crew losing because we screwed up should be a possibility IMO.

[Fluffy]

Leviathan gone, suggestion implemented

Locking and archiving