Steel on the Horizon/Mini-Arcs Feedback Thread

[Triogenix]

Though the mini-arc is not yet over, I decided to open this feedback thread because of the experimental nature of what we're doing. There is continuity stuff like sustained blue that we can already receive feedback on, plus ideas like  Though we have run plenty of mini-events in the past, most have been non-canon, or part of a larger arc with other, bigger events. This mini-arc is our attempt to look at how such canon things can be run, without the baggage that comes with planning an actual arc. So, as part of this, I'm also going to get into why we're attempting this, and the differences in what we're attempting.

Firstly, mini-arcs. While it may not be clear to those looking from an outside perspective, a large amount of planning and work goes into most event arcs, especially now as we are still relatively fresh into NBT, and need to code/sprite many new assets as we travel around the spur. The idea of mini-arcs is to run events that have limited continuity with assets already available or more easily made, cutting down on both the planning and the work required for them. I say limited because this continuity may only last for a day or two, such as in the case of Steel on the Horizon. However, they might also last for longer; it's up in the air for now.

Secondly, pacing and padding. As mini-arcs require significantly less planning and work means that they can happen regularly, without burning out the staff team. Steel on the Horizon is an extreme example of what a mini-arc can be, being rather violent, but as it is our experiment, it will give us useful data as to how far we can go in the future. Being able to put these types of arcs out regularly also helps us pad the space between major event arcs, such as Dreary Futures, Cold Dawn, and Synthetic Nightmares, keeping up canonicity and continuity in the gaps that develop. These arcs require tremendous amounts of work, so development gaps will always exist, and having a simple system of mini-arcs to keep canonical engagement high would help make these gaps feel less pronounced.

Thirdly, Aurora's commitment to canonical events and continuity. Canonical events and continuity are two of our server's greatest strengths, and it really shows through the sheer population difference seen during events. It's why many people engage with Aurora, understandably, the focus being on characters and growing them in different ways; which is easiest to do during events. Therefore, having large chunks of time without these opportunities is detrimental, but for larger arcs, necessary to ensure they are up to the standard we hold ourselves. Padding them with smaller, easier-to-run arcs, events, and the like is the solution, however, one we're experimenting with.

These are the primary reasons, and it would be helpful to see these reasons reflected in the feedback given. As an example, giving feedback that you think [INSERT ACTION OR DECISION HERE] was detrimental to continuity, or your thoughts on the idea as a whole, rather than [X was OP], as the latter is not very useful feedback for this topic. All we have currently is a fuzzy idea of what mini-arcs look like, how they should be used, and similar, one that once I am back on October 1st, I wish to begin hammering out into a comprehensive system, so we can more regularly create canon arcs for people to play in. The feedback you give will influence that system, whatever it ends up looking like, and I thank you in advance for giving it respectfully.

[Shimmer]

One thing I personally note, and it's all personal opinion, is that Aurora has too much of a reliance on high intensity / high stakes events to me. While I have not participated in the event personally due to scheduling issues, I likely wouldn't have either way because I don't enjoy events in which the crew is in imminent danger and people are getting killed.

I personally enjoy events in which there are no ship-destroying-stakes, that aren't combat heavy and are an environment for the crew to come together and explore a new environment, while allowing them to develop their relationships with each other. This is the service main in me speaking, and I understand that high stakes events are necessary to add spice and to prevent stagnation, but I think the medium of mini-arcs / mini-events are a perfect medium for no-intensity events, something akin to the New Gibson event during the KoTW arc.

[rrrrrr]

I really enjoyed it. This was the first event I've attended in a while. (I believe the last one I saw was a KOTW event years ago.) I think it was good to get the point across that the Horizon is moving through a dangerous, sparsely inhabited sector of space and that working on the Horizon can be and canonically is a reasonably hazardous workplace, that space is not entirely safe, so on and so forth. The mention of hazard pay was a good touch. Felt it was kinda hard to gauge how canon-hazardous it is to work on the Horizon, because antags aren't canon. "This is the first time we've seen X," etc. (Of course, several other events with extremely high death tolls have probably gotten this point across already.) I think a good mix of less violent/intense events and ones like this one would be something like 75%-25%.

Worth pointing out that an intense event wouldn't necessarily equate to things exploding and ship-to-ship combat, although I personally find it really interesting to see just how messed up the ship got after a solid hour of getting shot at. (It surprisingly wasn't that bad and I only almost died twice.)

Side-note: I don't know what service roles are supposed to do during events. Engineering was doing damage control and occasionally manning weapons, operations was manning weapons, R&D was throwing out gear, most of security went out to board the abandoned Hephaestus vessel, and command was commanding. There doesn't seem to be much of a place for service during events like this, which is unfortunate. I can personally think of a few plausible events that'd be very intense for service players.

Edited September 23, 2023 by rrrrrr

[greenjoe]

The visible continuity stuff is something I really like, it's nice, and helps to have things feel like they are moving on

[Fluffy]

I like high intensity events, we are competing to get the most precious resource known to men, in a space with a lot of conflicting ideologies, government and entities, which have a weak grasp on the expansive territory that is present in the galaxy

 

Though I'm not the biggest fan of canon deaths (though it has some pros too), I am absolutely a fan of high intensity events, having high stakes is good; no, it doesn't mean everything should be high intensity, but a good portion (around half), in my view, should

[GeneralCamo]

I feel we should just have more canon events in general. I do like high intensity but some lower intensity events to break up the monotony would be good. 

[CourierBravo]

I got to participate in my first event in a good long time, and I did like it! My only feedback isn't really related to the event itself. The low tick rate/lag was hard to deal with, and I think I survived what should have been a fatality because I was able to run away from an explosion well before it could finish and hit me. It also caused issues for loading the guns, printing things with machines, and other problems. I also know this is something the team is aware of, since admins were disabling less important things to improve tick rate. Otherwise, it was fun and I got to LARP as a loader. Good times.

[greenjoe]

Really nice arc
 

Make Pun Pun's death in part 1 canon

[ReadThisNamePlz]

I really enjoyed helping plan this, and doing the admin work behind all of it. 

I do not have too many critiques, and I really hope that I'm able to help run more events in the future. Thanks!

[NerdyVampire]

Speaking as an AI main I really enjoyed the cross-departmental crisis-handling that comes from high-intensity events like these. It corresponds well with the perceptions of the setting I maintain in my headspace. I can sympathize that finding meaning as service during an event like this isn't particularly straightforward. When I reflect on sci-fi shows like Star Trek, I find that the service function changes mostly to being a 'victim' role, or someone that needs protection rather than have a crisis-function. I am not sure there is a real answer to that, as I feel like that's also the obvious role-change in our setting. During a crisis like this, it makes no sense to work a kitchen, tend plants or serve drinks. I suppose the most involving and purpose-giving solution would be for the commander to direct the warden to begin training service crew into an auxilliary force with the crew armory without actually sending them out before it is necessary?

Anyway back to the feedback - I agree that mini-arcs is a viable and enticing solution to canonical development in the setting and I hope to see more! I do have a few suggestions for AI specifically in events, but that doesn't necessarily seem to belong here.

[La Villa Strangiato]

Hello, Aurorastation. It is me, Lavillastrangiato. In this post I'd like to talk about my thoughts on running events, respond to your feedback, and talk about my own feedback for the event. Before I do, I'd like to talk about this event's background, and who was involved in parts of the planning.

ReadThisNamePlz was the originator of the event concept, in which the Horizon would be shot at by pirates and have to retrieve some manner of treasure or prize. She was the admin, along with Roostercat12 and Garnascus, who spawned most of the equipment, ships, and other sundry for the non-crew roles to use.

Triogenix and I were the ones who wrote out most of the fine details of the event, including the motives of the pirates. I, specifically, was the one who helped balance the boarders and pirate crew by writing a list of equipment for them to have. I took feedback from various players, including ClemTheDuck and TheMaskedReader, to properly balance the boarders and ensure they wouldn't get immediately killed, or at the very least killed before they could be captured.

MattAtlas I feel deserves special credit because he helped debug our poor server after it started bugging out, and went through annoying tedium trying to help us.

Your Feedback

On 23/09/2023 at 01:46, Shimmer said:

One thing I personally note, and it's all personal opinion, is that Aurora has too much of a reliance on high intensity / high stakes events to me. While I have not participated in the event personally due to scheduling issues, I likely wouldn't have either way because I don't enjoy events in which the crew is in imminent danger and people are getting killed.

I personally enjoy events in which there are no ship-destroying-stakes, that aren't combat heavy and are an environment for the crew to come together and explore a new environment, while allowing them to develop their relationships with each other. This is the service main in me speaking, and I understand that high stakes events are necessary to add spice and to prevent stagnation, but I think the medium of mini-arcs / mini-events are a perfect medium for no-intensity events, something akin to the New Gibson event during the KoTW arc.

I have no argument against this feedback at all. In fact, I agree, and in the future I'd like to do more events that involve low-intensity conflict, or even something as relaxed as "The Horizon visits a nice place and does nice things". "ChairRP" is a term that gets flung around a lot, but in my experience I find giving players, readers, partakers in written media a period of downtime allows them to develop their characters and take more investment in the outcome of higher-intensity events.

The other reason I think low-intensity events are important is because let's face it, there's not a lot of people who want to *lose* their characters. And that's fine. If they don't want to die in a round, I don't want to discourage people from *all* canon events by the threat of randomly losing their character. (More on this later, by the by.)

TL;DR: Totally, dude, I get it.

On 23/09/2023 at 08:37, rrrrrr said:

Side-note: I don't know what service roles are supposed to do during events. Engineering was doing damage control and occasionally manning weapons, operations was manning weapons, R&D was throwing out gear, most of security went out to board the abandoned Hephaestus vessel, and command was commanding. There doesn't seem to be much of a place for service during events like this, which is unfortunate. I can personally think of a few plausible events that'd be very intense for service players.

This is definitely something I've thought about before, and I would really like to have more events that include service roles in a more front-and-center role. Honestly, I don't have a lot of ideas at the moment. Soup kitchens in Eridani? (Maybe not.)

16 hours ago, Bejewledpot said:

I got to participate in my first event in a good long time, and I did like it! My only feedback isn't really related to the event itself. The low tick rate/lag was hard to deal with, and I think I survived what should have been a fatality because I was able to run away from an explosion well before it could finish and hit me. It also caused issues for loading the guns, printing things with machines, and other problems. I also know this is something the team is aware of, since admins were disabling less important things to improve tick rate. Otherwise, it was fun and I got to LARP as a loader. Good times.

The problem with lag and tick rates is that we are on the BYOND platform, which everyone and their mother knows is made out of spit and tape. We have to hit lag as it comes, because there's really no satisfying our server when it has to handle one-hundred players (yes, we had one-hundred-ish players at one point!). This means we'd also generally keep deaths due to glitches non-canon, because losing your character to a bug fucking sucks.

My Feedback

Roleplay, leeway, and typefragging. Overall, I was very impressed with the roleplay that the raiders did, especially at the vault confrontation. However, some of the raiders were typefragged (shot or attacked while their text bubble popped up over their head). While this is obviously not fun, in the heat of the moment it is pretty easy to think about clicking spaceman until horizontal and not noticing the very small sprite. This is a fact of high-stress engagements, and I do not mean to be accusatory; it's just something that happened.

In the future, I would encourage players volunteering in antagonistic roles for events to try and engage with the crew a little more over hailing and common. This was something done by the raiders, I note, but it wasn't as in-depth as it could have been if they'd established more of a rapport at the start. Also, it's very hard to roleplay a lot while you're shelling the Horizon, trying to scream directions, and also the Freebooter ship is slow as fuck and the Horizon can already charge the Leviathan and lock on to you.

I personally think I should have encouraged crew to engage with the raiders, as I was mostly focused on setting up the raiders with their gear in the first hour-ish of the round. I think more roleplay could have been had if I encouraged the Captain and the rest of the command to take the raiders alive, potentially to find out their allegiances and who they're working for. But given two of the ship crew ended up surrendering to the Horizon at the end, it worked out in its own way.

Time and preparation. There's no beating around the bush; it took a long time to get everyone set-up. This was because Read was only one person, and she had to spawn a lot of shit for a lot of players. She did insanely well with the resources and time she was given. While I think spawning on a pre-created ship mitigated some of the equipment issues, we already had technical difficulties, confusion over who was being given what, and me trying to tell the raiders not to use all the TC they were accidentally given with an uplink. With something of this scale, I'd want to brush up on what combat balance looks like, bring in more admins to help spawn stuff, and coordinate more with the players on what gear they think would help them stay alive a little longer.

It worked out mostly fine, but it also meant that the Horizon got a lot of time to seriously fortify themselves and make it more difficult for the raiders to get a purchase. That in itself is not really bad. I've said time and time again that losing as an antag can be fun, but it's less fun when the Horizon gets an hour to reinforce their weak spots, print out shotgun slugs, and have a big announcement saying YO THERE ARE MOTHERFUCKIN PIRATES IN THIS MOTHERFUCKIN SECTOR AND THEY'RE COMING RIGHT AT YOU. Nobody broke rules, but in the future, given that this arc centered around a rise of piracy and the Horizon needing to be on alert, I would prefer to offer antagonists the need to work around the high alert level that the Horizon should already be on.

Example: the Horizon sees a strange independent vessel rapidly burning at them, goes "oh shit", and tells the departments to potentially prepare for attack! And everyone kind of already knew something was gonna happen, because we've restarted three times already and there were several announcements saying in black-and-white HEY THIS IS CANON, but it also means that there's a little more element of risk, surprise, and danger that is the bread and butter of high intensity events.

Canon deaths. Some characters died. Some characters died because of very egregious examples of downright confusing medical play that can't reasonably be attributed to a high-stress situation. As I've mentioned in Discord and OOC, Garnascus granted Wynfride Saar/SpookyCactus an on-the-spot retcon of Saar's death because her heart was quite literally torn out of her chest while she was still alive and bleeding out in the corner. The OOC consequences were handled by an administrator. This is one such example of gameplay that resulted in someone actually dying. I saw a lot of other examples of near-deaths that, in my medical main opinion, could've been avoided.

I am not a server administrator; as deputy loremaster, I do not have access to server logs. It is impossible for me to say definitively that so-and-so should have happened. However, given what I saw in this round, I felt it was prudent to allow players to submit their requests to have their death retconned.

When I brought this up in Dchat (and admittedly I was a little passionately upset at what I was seeing), a couple people questioned the (then-unofficial) decision. I want to make it perfectly clear why we would let someone retcon their character's death if they died in this event.

The long and short of it is that if you were tossed in the corner and a huge puddle of blood was pooling around you for twenty minutes, and you were paralyzed and paincritted, and medical didn't even bandage your wounds, and you couldn't even do any dramatic "ugh, I'm dying, please tell Urist McStation I love him!"-style RP, or any RP at all because nobody's paying attention to you, that sucks. It's not fun, doesn't serve to progress a story, and doesn't act as an example of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". In this case, your death wasn't even really your fault, and it's a slap in the face after being put in an AFK zone for 20-odd minutes while you bleed out.

Is this probably going to be a controversial ruling? Yes. Are all the deaths from this event going to be retconned? No. There were definitely cases where the risk and the circumstances surrounding some deaths meant that losing your character was appropriate, and some players have already mentioned they won't be submitting a retcon request.

Ultimately, I don't want people discouraged from playing canon events because their death was entirely out of their control. We are playing a game that was, again, coded on spit and string, and concessions need to be made for that.

In Conclusion

At the end of the day, I'm happy that people had a positive reaction to our little mini-arc. It was a big learning experience for me, and even if it frustrated me in places, people managed to get something out of it and that's what matters to me.

I'm hoping I can write more arcs in the future, as deputy loremaster, and I'm hoping they'll be received well. Thank you to everyone who participated, and thank you to Read, Trio, and the rest of the staff team for giving advice, helping with technical stuff, and doing the usual jannie-isms. I have never been more pleased that you guys do it for free.

Edited September 24, 2023 by La Villa Strangiato

[lilahnovi]

This event was interesting, I liked it. Especially with the ship being messed up across arounds.

One thing it made me consider though -- it would be really nice if there was something akin to a crew bunker - perhaps something that unlocks when the alert is raised. Being in the center ring can suck a lot for a number of reasons -- in many cases, we're just in the way of security, engineering, and often medical who is trying to use the mechanist or RnD to evac. As well, it's often hard to reoxygenate, and we have to maker a fat mess, dragging lockers into the place.
We talked a bit about this in OOC - consider making Holodeck Beta into the new crew bunker - maybe with access to the showers? Hmmm!

[N8-Toe]

I'd be against a crew bunker. I've played on a server in the past that had salerooms for crew. and what it turned into is "code red get in the safe room" which wasn't that engaging to most people. As well made it more difficult for antags as the only people out roaming where Sec/med/engineering. Making it harder to take hostages, or engage with the crew. Having to figure out on the fly where to hunker down or hide and get the needed supplies I think is gameplay and RP.

 

on the event itself. I only played the first one as CE. and gotta say I loved it, being able to do large scale damage control was a treat as engineering

[lilahnovi]

9 minutes ago, N8-Toe said:

I'd be against a crew bunker. I've played on a server in the past that had salerooms for crew. and what it turned into is "code red get in the safe room" which wasn't that engaging to most people. As well made it more difficult for antags as the only people out roaming where Sec/med/engineering. Making it harder to take hostages, or engage with the crew. Having to figure out on the fly where to hunker down or hide and get the needed supplies I think is gameplay and RP.

The purpose would be for the situations when "oops all of service has entirely exploded" which has happened a few times now on events and some other situations. The purpose isn't "there's a shooter go to the bunker."

The thing is, nobody is 'figuring out where to hunker down.' We all go to the central ring and hang out where there is nowhere to sit, the space is wide open and difficult to reoxygenate, and everyone stands right in front of the entrance, getting in the way. This is essentially our "safe room" when service goes belly up. 
Then we stand around and be nervous. Yesterday, when the Levi was shot, there were not enough chairs for people to buckle down into and there was nowhere for them to go, so they just were flung around. The space is too large as is and taken up by the starmap (which is fine for a fancy central ring, not fine for an emergency evac space). The occasional person goes out to get stuff, but for the most part, people hang out in the one spot and watch the world go by nervously. This is also the purpose of the restricted (probably to hallways and general areas) camera feeds for the safe room. It gives people something they can look at and talk about. Everyone is more together and organized. RP is easier and more engaging, especially because you know who is there in the first place, and who is gone when people go out to get supplies or do something (it's very chaotic when engineers, doctors, and sec are running around in the middle of your group, and it's very difficult when they have to push people out of the way to get where they need to go).

Every workplace I've ever been to has a safe place for people to go when there is dangerous weather, usually an auditorium. When/if there is an active shooter, we're ordered to stay in our departments/classrooms/etc and hide. It wouldn't make any sense to evacuate everyone to a bunker when there is a shooter.

The conversation in the relay OOC channel where this originated was thoughtful, and why I ended up posting the suggestion in the end. Nobody mentioned that it would become "code red, go to your room" because that doesn't make sense anyway.

[Pemander]

54 minutes ago, N8-Toe said:

I'd be against a crew bunker. I've played on a server in the past that had salerooms for crew. and what it turned into is "code red get in the safe room" which wasn't that engaging to most people. As well made it more difficult for antags as the only people out roaming where Sec/med/engineering. Making it harder to take hostages, or engage with the crew.

I understand where you're coming from here, as it's not ideal for the service crew to be totally sectioned off from the antags, but I think there may be some potential here for the opposite to occur. Like Lilah mentioned above, most of the time when things are going to hell around the outer edges of the ship, people end up congregating in the central ring. Admittedly, I'm far from a seasoned antag player (and if anyone that is wants to weigh in and correct me on this, please do), but it feels to me like the design of the ship strongly discourages you from trying to push through the central ring or try to take hostages there. It's wide open, and there are entrances to it from various departments all around you, as well as both above and below. If an engagement does break out there, there's a high potential for things to get extremely chaotic. If, on the other hand, you manage to find your way into a space full of unarmed potential hostages that also offers you a tactical advantage, you're much more likely to choose that option. This could also make things more interesting from Security's standpoint; if things go down in the central ring, you have a million and one ways of getting in there to try to resolve the situation. But if the place the crew gathers is slightly out of the way and has fewer entrances and exits, then you have a trade-off to consider: do you leave some of your forces near the bunker to make sure the crew is well-protected, and risk being taken down in engagements elsewhere in the ship? Or do you go all-out on the offensive in the hopes of getting rid of the threat as soon as possible?

I'm sure there are ways to address this issue that don't require the ship to be changed in some way, but I don't think it should be totally ruled out as a viable option.

I'm also thinking about quantity vs. quality here when it comes to antag encounters during high-stakes events. Catching a glimpse of big scary person with gun and immediately running in the opposite direction is exciting, but it's not often engaging. If the crew is stuck in a room with the bad guy, it opens up more potential for the kind of depth that is often lacking in the current model of 'spend an hour hunkered down in the central ring, and then when you finally get more than a brief glimpse of the enemy, it's because they're a corpse'.

[Spungus]

I would like to see more canon events, just ones that aren't as high-stakes. Something like a weird merchant or an unusual anomaly, just stuff that isn't particularly dangerous but still interesting.

[lilahnovi]

4 hours ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

In the future, I would encourage players volunteering in antagonistic roles for events to try and engage with the crew a little more over hailing and common.
...
I personally think I should have encouraged crew to engage with the raiders, as I was mostly focused on setting up the raiders with their gear in the first hour-ish of the round.

I can at least say that this was not your fault in any regard. Command ordered everyone but essential people off of comms, so engaging with antags over the comms was a little bit tough. Totally understand why the call was made, as things were starting to get a little chaotic. (Unless in this case you are meaning crew as in essential crew, then ignore me.)