Ublicto - Command Application 2

[Ublicto]

BYOND key: Ublicto

Discord Username: GalacticEmpireLover

Character names:

Elwood Johnson and Athena are my most played characters.

 

How long have you been playing on Aurora?
Close to four months

Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they?
I have received some notes and an antag ban. One note is for not understanding the role of Warden well enough, another is for too aggressive antag play which I also received the antag ban for. None of these interactions were caused by me acting in bad faith, and I have demonstrated a willingness to avoid past errors.

 

Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each.

What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?

A head organizes their department to respond to the round and is a primary driver of the story. They direct their department's response to anything that could happen and also ensure that the proper materials are available to help their department do its job. In the case of new players, command staff should ensure that they have the resources to become used to their assignment and aren't pushed out by a lack of familiarity with the mechanics. A head of staff does not need to IC know how every part of their department works, but they should be familiar with their role and be able to organize other players. The primary skill of a head of staff is communication and organization.

What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?

They must facilitate role play in a constructive way and do what benefits the people playing the round best. That means ensuring departments have clear objectives and in situations where there is a threat to the ship or its crew respond in reasonable ways that are conducive to telling a story. With regard to antagonists, command players should generally give them leeway and allow them to pursue creative gimmicks within IC reason. During extended rounds departments receiving objectives or otherwise being given goals that allow role play that is not just having twenty people in the bar all the time might also be good and make the round more fun, and allow more canon experiences for characters.

 

Explain how the recent events in the Spur changed your character and how they came to be employed on the SCCV Horizon.

Maximilian Burns is a career explorer and merchant who is 37 years of age. His mother Andrea passed away early in his life, and his father Herbert who was the owner of the small trading firm "Burns Trading Company" would raise him on his home moon of Callisto, although Maximilian would attend higher education on Earth. The influence of his father would permeate Maximilian's life and grow his interest in the adventure and profit of interstellar trade, which his Father would cultivate even more so by ensuring his son would be employed in his business and eventually command one of the family's five trading ships. With megacorporate competition forcing the Burns company's profit margins down and the stagnant Alliance economy further limiting their avenues for growth the company would resort to riskier and riskier enterprises to make ends meet. When Herbert Burns died and the company passed to Maximilian it had virtually no liquid resources and was barely able to pay interest on its debts. Maximilian would do everything he could to save it, and quickly find that he would have to resort to riskier and riskier expeditions to Interstellar war era ruins, alien wrecks, and high value transport to keep the Burns Trading Company alive. He would even have to cross ethical and legal boundaries at times. Regardless of his efforts it was inevitable that he would fail. The collapse of organized authority in much of the Middle and Outer rings of the Sol Alliance would doom the Burns Trading Company's future prospects. With the writing on the wall, Maximilian broke up the Burns Shipping Company in 2562 and auctioned off its assets to pay back debts and save what he could of the small family fortune.

He would find a way to do that through employment with the SCC. Being an experienced businessman and trader in difficult situations already he would find employment first as an operations manager aboard a space station before becoming the executive officer of the survey ship SCCV Advance that would be attacked on a mission to a deserted star system by Southern Solarian Military District raiders in 2564. The death of the SCCV Advance's Captain forced him to take command of the ship which he successfully guided to safety and prevented the capture of. This secured a chance for his promotion, which he took at the earliest possible time. He would be assigned to the SCCV Horizon, a much more advanced ship with a similar mission profile to his last posting.

What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted?
Captain

Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles?
Yes

Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking:
Maximilian Burns - Captain

Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action?
Yes, I expect to me stripped of the whitelist if I mess up in a major way or make a pattern of bad decision making.

Have you linked your BYOND account to the Forums?
Yes

Extra notes:

Edited November 4, 2023 by Ublicto

[NerdyVampire]

Is it wrong that I don't want you to be command staff because I'd hate to lose you as an antag?

When I think of Athena I think of innovative gimmicks and that is certainly something that can benefit a command member as well. The ability to respond to antagonists in innovative ways and otherwise engage and inspire crew to roleplay are great virtues in any command member. I would like to see how you handle both of those challenges. +1

I can't say I have roleplayed much directly with you unfortunately, but seeing your interactions from the AI's eye has been interesting!

Also, first warden antag I've seen since Aurora, so that's pretty cool too.

Edited November 2, 2023 by NerdyVampire

[Noble Row]

When this guy first started I was skeptical of his behavior. But over the time, he has done a complete 180. Ublicto puts care and effort in to their work, and puts a level of passion and knowledge that a lot of the player base lacks. They are knowledgeable and outgoing about the lore they know, and I would love to see them get a shot at command.

+1

[limette]

I think Ublicto's come a long way since they first joined, and I've very much enjoyed my roleplay with Elwood Johnson in the past, and found him to be a solid character despite my initial reservations. I've found Athena as well to be fun to interact with, though I've only done so as an antagonist so I won't yet make too much judgement. Overall verdict? As both Warden and Scientist you've understood round flow better than most, and know when to enable things and when to clamp down. I think these are good attributes in command.

[dessysalta]

I have nothing but good words for Ublicto and the characters they've made over their time spent on Aurora. I love their writing style and how well they can coordinate things like antagonist events, players, and I have no doubt they would be a good fit for command.

(P.S. Raided by the Southern Military District, you say? 👀)

[Duthco]

I adore both Athena and Warden Johnson. They're both very well written and flavorful characters whom I am always glad to see on the manifest.

As was mentioned above, I agree it will be a shame to lose Ublicto from the cadre of semi-regular antagonists, as their antagonism tends to be high quality, with an eye not only on their broader episodic arc, but also on the minutiae of individual interactions.

That said, all of that is really just evidence in my eyes that they would serve any given round very well from a Command position.

+1

[Fluffy]

Absolutely a fun player to play either with or against, +1 for the trial from me

[YellowRoseFromTexas]

Actual menace and tyrant, would lead the Horizon to an objectively worst place.

+1 from Drood.

[CampinKiller]

On trial thru 11/12/23

[Warbidon]

WOW, I LOVE THE CAPTAIN YOU PLAY.

Athena is actually fantastic too. I support your endeavor to become something finer, and leave this quote from my book with how much I love all that you do. Just the way your captain quotes great iconic stuff is amazing to me.

"Yes, I could be something finer, but what we are is less important than what we do. The world is where we live, and I will defend it till I die. You can keep your visions."

[La Villa Strangiato]

Played a brief round with you as my CMO. Innocuous, no bad behaviour.

The round after that, I played as my xenoarchaeologist, and what followed was kinda wacky. Not all of this is your fault or entirely placed on you, but I would like to summarise the events to attempt to elucidate why shit broke down so badly. Before I get too deeply into this, I would like to establish this is not a -1. It is an attempt to explain why the entire thing exploded as badly it did, and offer potential critique that you can take or leave.

As TL;DR as I can make it: Max Burns catches wind of the lone asteroid (the Solarian base away site) on sensors. Choosing to interpret the sensor readings as a potential distress signal, he assembles a team [Avengers theme] to "rescue" whoever is sealed on the base. This goes wrong for multiple reasons; the bridge crewman (Rajkumari Saha) gets thrown around from the Intrepid's movement and damages her organs, Saphy Lotami steps on a mine, then after the Intrepid gets back to the Horizon, the miner (Delan Girard) gets attacked by a reaver and an inopportune rescue mission gets launched, in which Hildebrand Metze kind of rushed out and got owned (sorry, Rookie, you got filtered).

Meanwhile, Max Burns sends the entire security team, most of the engineers, and the other first responder (Hal'zrrimya Yufalrii) back to the base. Another bridge crewman, Azari Marrkarr, and myself, Jiaxing Volvalaad, teleport down to the Spark to potentially assist in rescuing Delan, because as far as I knew at the time, nobody has showed up to the Spark for medical assistance. The kicker is that neither of us have access to the Spark airlock, and Azari requesting someone who has access to the airlock takes a very long time to complete.

So the bodies of Hildebrand and Delan get recovered, but meanwhile the Intrepid lifts off and goes back to the base. That's more or less the Big Events.

To speak on my personal feelings, I felt you ignored the science department. Jiaxing tried to discuss stuff with Burns over comms; I didn't really push it that hard, as by that point I had different IC concerns. If you want to assemble an expedition, that's fine, and it's fine if the RP reason that research isn't immediately consulted is because you consider it a matter of life and death, that's fine. At the midway point of the round, however, it's been obviously established that this is not a matter of life and death, and control was not handed over to the research department in the aftermath of it becoming an expedition. This was kind of frustrating.

Communication, as you brought up in maincord previously, broke down a lot. I didn't have access to command comms except through overhearing it, so I can't say what did and didn't happen; however, I do know that pretty much the entire round could have gone a bit smoother if you gave more clear, decisive orders. "Continue exploring, but offload the bridge crewman". "Send a security officer along with the first responder". Etc. etc. Sometimes, you also have to not volun-tell people, and keep away teams smaller depending on player interest.

We can't all have bangers every day we play, which is why a command trial exists. I wish you luck in your future rounds!

[Flpfs]

I have seen you play as your captain, and have interacted with your character Elwood Johnson before; I now have some feedback:

On a round where I was speaking with another character, a surgeon completely covered in blood ran past by my character and yours, ignoring everybody running into a bathroom, and a FR shortly followed them after. My character commented that this behavior was very strange and bizarre, considering that just a few minutes before, an incident happened in that same bathroom. Your captain mentioned that they could simply be dirty from blood and needed to clean themselves, and told my character to carry on. 

Given context on what happened previously in the round, a surgeon running out of medical, panicking and fully covered in blood, all the way from D2 medical to a bathroom in D3, just to clean themselves, is bizarre - I am sure you were OOCly aware of this too, but decided to play along with any potential antagonist gimmicks that were going on in round.

I do not mean this in a negative way, but you as a command player should not willingly ignore obvious things to give antagonists advantages. The behavior displayed was very illogical and I would not like to see it routinely done by a member of command, which is why I have decided to comment on this application.

 

[ReadThisNamePlz]

15 minutes ago, Flpfs said:

I have seen you play as your captain, and have interacted with your character Elwood Johnson before; I now have some feedback:

On a round where I was speaking with another character, a surgeon completely covered in blood ran past by my character and yours, ignoring everybody running into a bathroom, and a FR shortly followed them after. My character commented that this behavior was very strange and bizarre, considering that just a few minutes before, an incident happened in that same bathroom. Your captain mentioned that they could simply be dirty from blood and needed to clean themselves, and told my character to carry on. 

Given context on what happened previously in the round, a surgeon running out of medical, panicking and fully covered in blood, all the way from D2 medical to a bathroom in D3, just to clean themselves, is bizarre - I am sure you were OOCly aware of this too, but decided to play along with any potential antagonist gimmicks that were going on in round.

I do not mean this in a negative way, but you as a command player should not willingly ignore obvious things to give antagonists advantages. The behavior displayed was very illogical and I would not like to see it routinely done by a member of command, which is why I have decided to comment on this application.

 

Hi, I want to clarify something as one of the WL Admins, and an admin in general. 
 

Command players are expected to not shut down antagonists immediately upon recognition or “slip up” from the antagonist. In fact, It is more realistic for a Command Character to brush off something like this because in a day to day work place, there’s no reason to be outwardly suspicious of every little discrepancy.

A surgeon who is covered in blood, rushing to a washroom? Totally believable and shouldn’t really be a focal point of suspicion. 

A man walking around with an assault rifle who is clearly hostile? A bit different. 

[Ublicto]

33 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Played a brief round with you as my CMO. Innocuous, no bad behaviour.

The round after that, I played as my xenoarchaeologist, and what followed was kinda wacky. Not all of this is your fault or entirely placed on you, but I would like to summarise the events to attempt to elucidate why shit broke down so badly. Before I get too deeply into this, I would like to establish this is not a -1. It is an attempt to explain why the entire thing exploded as badly it did, and offer potential critique that you can take or leave.

As TL;DR as I can make it: Max Burns catches wind of the lone asteroid (the Solarian base away site) on sensors. Choosing to interpret the sensor readings as a potential distress signal, he assembles a team [Avengers theme] to "rescue" whoever is sealed on the base. This goes wrong for multiple reasons; the bridge crewman (Rajkumari Saha) gets thrown around from the Intrepid's movement and damages her organs, Saphy Lotami steps on a mine, then after the Intrepid gets back to the Horizon, the miner (Delan Girard) gets attacked by a reaver and an inopportune rescue mission gets launched, in which Hildebrand Metze kind of rushed out and got owned (sorry, Rookie, you got filtered).

Meanwhile, Max Burns sends the entire security team, most of the engineers, and the other first responder (Hal'zrrimya Yufalrii) back to the base. Another bridge crewman, Azari Marrkarr, and myself, Jiaxing Volvalaad, teleport down to the Spark to potentially assist in rescuing Delan, because as far as I knew at the time, nobody has showed up to the Spark for medical assistance. The kicker is that neither of us have access to the Spark airlock, and Azari requesting someone who has access to the airlock takes a very long time to complete.

So the bodies of Hildebrand and Delan get recovered, but meanwhile the Intrepid lifts off and goes back to the base. That's more or less the Big Events.

To speak on my personal feelings, I felt you ignored the science department. Jiaxing tried to discuss stuff with Burns over comms; I didn't really push it that hard, as by that point I had different IC concerns. If you want to assemble an expedition, that's fine, and it's fine if the RP reason that research isn't immediately consulted is because you consider it a matter of life and death, that's fine. At the midway point of the round, however, it's been obviously established that this is not a matter of life and death, and control was not handed over to the research department in the aftermath of it becoming an expedition. This was kind of frustrating.

Communication, as you brought up in maincord previously, broke down a lot. I didn't have access to command comms except through overhearing it, so I can't say what did and didn't happen; however, I do know that pretty much the entire round could have gone a bit smoother if you gave more clear, decisive orders. "Continue exploring, but offload the bridge crewman". "Send a security officer along with the first responder". Etc. etc. Sometimes, you also have to not volun-tell people, and keep away teams smaller depending on player interest.

We can't all have bangers every day we play, which is why a command trial exists. I wish you luck in your future rounds!

Part of this I feel is because there was no HoS and no CMO so I was essentially coordinating three different teams of people and had little bandwidth left over for anything else. It was extremely difficult to pay attention to everything at once.  The expedition was also going against turrets and mines so I decided to send a lot of sec down rather than research because I imagined they'd be fighting more than anything else. I would have given a lot of those short and decisive orders if I could have and in retrospect I probably should have made someone interm HoS and CMO so I didn't have to deal with all this. Live and learn. I apologize if some of my mistakes made the round worse for you, but all things considered I think it was an alright round and I did an alright job. Much of your critique has merit, some of it I do not agree with. Thank you for it regardless, I appreciate it.

[SatinsPristOTD]

I've worked Command under Burns (and I did Command with you under that complete CHAOS extended round with the bunker base expedition).

Honestly, I like the way you approach Command characters. Burns is approachable. Burns makes mistakes. Burns can sometimes kick some major ass. 

You've made a 2d spessman... feel like a person, and that's best compliment I can give any roleplayer on Aurora. 

Command players (and their characters) will never be perfect. You're gonna make mistakes. Burns is going to make enemies. So far? You're doing a bang up job at handling this whitelist. 

It's a +1 for me. I'd like to see you pass this whitelist. 

[JeffMomentRed]

I have had mixed feelings about Ublicto since they joined as Elwood Johnson, but having seen his characters and attitude change aswell having just learned more about them from my perspective, I'm willing to support a +1 knowing that if asked to correct something, Ublicto will, given proper advice or critique. I've seen Ublicto's Burns behave as a communicative and effective leader, willing to engage with antags as more than just an escalating security response. I have also seen Burns fumble a few times. Are they going to make mistakes? Yeah, big time, as a Captain for sure. Is a Captain the right role for a starting Command App? Man, don't look at me, I just play Operations. But I think given time to fit into the boots, Ublicto could be a solid active Captain player, which is something we need more of, which is why I am willing to support this.

[dessysalta]

I haven't yet had the pleasure of being directly underneath Burns as a character whilst in command, but I can tell you with absolute certainty he's (both Ublicto and his character) great with antagonist gimmicks. One of the things I noticed during my gimmick (which admittedly revolved around Burns' exploitables) was the fact that Burns was talking constantly over the radio, making effective callouts, asking for check-ins, getting them, and responding with more information or callouts as the situation needed it. Moreover, all of what he said didn't detract from where he was at the time of the callouts, having been a direct witness to a lot of his interactions, Ublicto made sure to balance roleplay and quick, efficient, calculated callouts and never miss a mark.

I'll update this if I serve directly under Ublicto as say a HOS or XO, but I felt like I should offer my insight as an antagonist, too. +1, +100 even.

[CampinKiller]

Accepted