Add Interesting Stuff to the Horizon's Residential Deck / Shore Leave

[Lly2]

dont really have a huge sell here, this conversation just came up for the bajillionth time since the horizon launched

there was always frequent discussion about this when the horizon was just the NBT, and it always felt 50/50 between people who wanted realism and compared the horizon to existing similar spaces IRL, and people who just wanted fun stuff to do even disregarding however much sense it makes to have those things on the horizon

the discussion came up again in the aurora discord today, but now we've been on the horizon for a long time, and it feels like it's 90/10 towards people who are bored of having nothing to say their characters' have been up to besides whatever you can think of to do sat inside a tiny dorm. it feels like more people than not are bored by the lack of ability to make up stuff they've done off-duty to the same degree they used to be able to (regardless of what does exist currently, it's immutably true that it's enormously less than what was available on the previous map)

going from having the entirety of mendell city available between every single shift, and being able to come up with literally anything that might be available to do there to give yourself something to talk about the next time you play, to having a single dorm room has grown very boring, at least for me personally. there's only so much "idk i watched tv/played games/sat around in my bedroom" that i can handle before getting tired. i don't know exactly what anyone wants to be available on the residential deck but as it stands anything other than dorm rooms and shared bathrooms would be such an enormous, at least to me personally

thx chat

edit: matt mentioned an alternative suggestion to do with shore leave, which i personally think is better than resdeck stuff, so copying it here too

28 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

The main problem, in my opinion, is the lack of a stable setting that characters live in that resembles a city, or at least something that gives them a shiny variety outside of work. I don't think adding more stuff to the nebulous resdeck fixes that problem for a few reasons: it adds a lot of grey areas (would people be able to headcanon whatever?) and fundamentally I think it's boring. It doesn't have the same excitement or anywhere near the same potential as getting something started in a city. Like you'd be going from "let's get street food in District Six" to "let's go to the metal pool to pretend we're not working". Boring!

 

So, my thought is this: expanding port calls. First of all, people should not feel like tourists - we could add into lore that the Horizon handles visas and stuff for crew, along with shuttling (BCs could do that?). Every Sunday the rounds would announce that the Horizon is going to port at some point for refueling or whatever and that people would be free to go to the planet after their shift. Then you'd have a handy excuse to get off work and a constant anchor ("wanna do something on Sunday?"). What do you guys think?

 

Edited February 28 by Lly2

[Lly2]

to clarify (because i got asked) this is suggesting changing what canonically exists on the residential deck from just rooms, to whatever other stuff that would make it a slightly more interesting space to exist in

"Narrow halls connect to bunkrooms with separated pods of bunks, one atop the other. [...] There are no entertainment systems, eateries, gyms or otherwise installed on the level. The crew are expected to use the facilities provided in the occupational decks above for those needs."

this is what is currently said to exist on the residential decks on the wiki. i don't think it would massively hurt realism to add common rooms people can hang out in, or entertainment systems, or a room with a big ass screen to watch movies on (or literally anything else). i don't think these things existing or not on the residential deck impacts how many people log in and go off-duty

[wowzewow]

this should be in the lore canonization applications section

Edited February 27 by wowzewow

[Lly2]

if people talk about it and want it then im sure someone can write a proper application for it, i made this thread because discord was talking about it for the infinitieth time (and discord discussions never go anywhere unless someone makes a thread)

[CatsinHD]

3 hours ago, Lly2 said:

common rooms people can hang out in, or entertainment systems, or a room with a big ass screen to watch movies on (or literally anything else). i don't think these things existing or not on the residential deck impacts how many people log in and go off-duty

In fairness, for things like dorm blocks and cubicle blocks, these common rooms do exist, and can have things like holoscreens and such. That doesn't resolve the issue for the 5 morbillion corapts that every other character seems to own, but I just thought I'd clarify (unless I'm misremembering in which case shoot me).

I would like some recreational stuff. I understand the intention of drying up that stuff for the occupational deck, it's to encourage people to go off-duty and hangout there (which is still very valid imo). However, considering 90% of people are usually wanting to do hangout RP when they don't have the time for a round, or would rather an asynchronous system, having something like a large rec room with pool tables and holoscreens and whatever would be nice. A gym, maybe. I would rather not a holodeck, but that's just me.

Also, to not neglect shore leave, not every character has the money to just take a shuttle to the planet nearby, or the time, or the PTO, or the desire.

tldr; I agree but it shouldn't go overboard.

[N8-Toe]

yeah I think having just sorta in the "cannon" there's a rec room, a cafeteria, or just very bare bones things I think works. In my head, I usually imagine the habitation deck as just being abit nicer than IRL commercial ships.

 

But I think what is most critical. is that the deck the game takes place  on is where anything interesting/of note happens. The time in round should be a characters defining moments. And it shouldn't ever take narrative backseat to out of game RP

[Dreamix]

I think this suggestion is nice. There is only so much you can do outside of actually being in game, with the in-room activities. Only so much extranet browsing, running in the hallways, watching movies, reading books.

But it's also part of a bigger problem I think, being that Horizon is a ship that doesn't really go anywhere. It's disappointing in all sorts of ways, and I've been saying this for a while now.

Remember when shore leave was introduced, near Elyra, and everyone was excited, people posting about it every day on the relay, and talking about it IC. And then shore leave was sort of forgotten, and after Badlands we've never really been to any interesting place until now Konyang. But Konyang itself, while cool, isn't really a very inviting place for shore leave, currently at least during the arc. With the IPC infection stuff, and my understanding is that we are confined to to the quarantined off spaceport district, so can't really venture out to travel all over the planet, or even really the city. I really wish we could have shorter  and smaller arcs, but more focused.

[Carver]

1 hour ago, Dreamix said:

I think this suggestion is nice. There is only so much you can do outside of actually being in game, with the in-room activities. Only so much extranet browsing, running in the hallways, watching movies, reading books.

But it's also part of a bigger problem I think, being that Horizon is a ship that doesn't really go anywhere. It's disappointing in all sorts of ways, and I've been saying this for a while now.

Remember when shore leave was introduced, near Elyra, and everyone was excited, people posting about it every day on the relay, and talking about it IC. And then shore leave was sort of forgotten, and after Badlands we've never really been to any interesting place until now Konyang. But Konyang itself, while cool, isn't really a very inviting place for shore leave, currently at least during the arc. With the IPC infection stuff, and my understanding is that we are confined to to the quarantined off spaceport district, so can't really venture out to travel all over the planet, or even really the city. I really wish we could have shorter  and smaller arcs, but more focused.

I'd say Adhomai and Xanu were fantastic for shore leave, but I do agree we need more hotspots where possible. I'm curious where the next arc will take us, as some planets can be very hit/miss (Moroz for example basically blocks off a significant amount of crew from shore leave) and in turn wouldn't be ideal for terribly lengthy 'orbit periods', though that's not to say I wouldn't want us to visit them for 2-3 weeks.

[Alberyk]

Nothing is stopping you from roleplaying in the relay that you are using the facilities that exist in-game, like the pool and the bar.

[MattAtlas]

The main problem, in my opinion, is the lack of a stable setting that characters live in that resembles a city, or at least something that gives them a shiny variety outside of work. I don't think adding more stuff to the nebulous resdeck fixes that problem for a few reasons: it adds a lot of grey areas (would people be able to headcanon whatever?) and fundamentally I think it's boring. It doesn't have the same excitement or anywhere near the same potential as getting something started in a city. Like you'd be going from "let's get street food in District Six" to "let's go to the metal pool to pretend we're not working". Boring!

 

So, my thought is this: expanding port calls. First of all, people should not feel like tourists - we could add into lore that the Horizon handles visas and stuff for crew, along with shuttling (BCs could do that?). Every Sunday the rounds would announce that the Horizon is going to port at some point for refueling or whatever and that people would be free to go to the planet after their shift. Then you'd have a handy excuse to get off work and a constant anchor ("wanna do something on Sunday?"). What do you guys think?

[Lly2]

20 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

So, my thought is this: expanding port calls. First of all, people should not feel like tourists - we could add into lore that the Horizon handles visas and stuff for crew, along with shuttling (BCs could do that?). Every Sunday the rounds would announce that the Horizon is going to port at some point for refueling or whatever and that people would be free to go to the planet after their shift. Then you'd have a handy excuse to get off work and a constant anchor ("wanna do something on Sunday?"). What do you guys think?

i think this is my favourite solution to the problem, personally speaking

port calls and shore leave are really cool, but right now they're super nebulous in the sense of: my character is broke, can they afford it? how do the visas work? how often can i go, can i justify heading down for lunch, or is it supposed to be something that requires taking a few days off? anything to sort of clarify that and just write down exactly what we're allowed to do there would make me way more comfortable using the system as it is.

i know right now i can say i'm going down to konyang and stuff, but there's a weirdness to it since there's all those questions and i'm never sure if i'm "doing it right", so to speak

in an ideal world the solution that just allows everyone to engage with it would be the best, even if it's not the most realistic. so pretty much what you said - that it's a perk of the job everyone gets, the horizon handles the shuttles and visas so we don't have to think about how it would work monetarily so much, and that sort of thing

 

[Noble Row]

12 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

Every Sunday the rounds would announce that the Horizon is going to port at some point for refueling or whatever and that people would be free to go to the planet after their shift.

I like this. Adds more life to the immediate setting we have.

[CatsinHD]

12 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

Every Sunday the rounds would announce that the Horizon is going to port at some point for refueling

I also quite like this idea, and also makes the fluff line on the sensor readings mean something

[furrycactus]

Shore leave is a really great idea and it's been really good to see it's actually happening as of late. The only thing is, it being on Sundays for our American and European friends has left southern hemisphere players in a spot where attending is pretty much impossible. I know for me being on Australia's east coast, shore leave happens around 7am on a Monday morning, which is also 4am for the west coast. Ghastly hours, but if someone is determined enough to make them on a weekend it would be possible. But with them being the northern hemisphere's Sunday, it's a Monday morning and people tend to have to have to attend classes or go to work. I understand it probably has to rely on the availability of staff, but would there be any possibility at all they could be ran on NH Saturdays, which would be very early SH Sunday mornings?

[MattAtlas]

3 hours ago, furrycactus said:

Shore leave is a really great idea and it's been really good to see it's actually happening as of late. The only thing is, it being on Sundays for our American and European friends has left southern hemisphere players in a spot where attending is pretty much impossible. I know for me being on Australia's east coast, shore leave happens around 7am on a Monday morning, which is also 4am for the west coast. Ghastly hours, but if someone is determined enough to make them on a weekend it would be possible. But with them being the northern hemisphere's Sunday, it's a Monday morning and people tend to have to have to attend classes or go to work. I understand it probably has to rely on the availability of staff, but would there be any possibility at all they could be ran on NH Saturdays, which would be very early SH Sunday mornings?

we aren't going to run them all the time, we only set the map to konyang yesterday to fill an event hole - the "these will happen on thursday and sunday" is in-universe

[furrycactus]

14 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

we aren't going to run them all the time, we only set the map to konyang yesterday to fill an event hole - the "these will happen on thursday and sunday" is in-universe

Oh awesome, don't worry about what I said then in that case! Really awesome idea and I'm glad to see it.

[MattAtlas]

On 28/02/2024 at 04:32, MattAtlas said:

The main problem, in my opinion, is the lack of a stable setting that characters live in that resembles a city, or at least something that gives them a shiny variety outside of work. I don't think adding more stuff to the nebulous resdeck fixes that problem for a few reasons: it adds a lot of grey areas (would people be able to headcanon whatever?) and fundamentally I think it's boring. It doesn't have the same excitement or anywhere near the same potential as getting something started in a city. Like you'd be going from "let's get street food in District Six" to "let's go to the metal pool to pretend we're not working". Boring!

 

So, my thought is this: expanding port calls. First of all, people should not feel like tourists - we could add into lore that the Horizon handles visas and stuff for crew, along with shuttling (BCs could do that?). Every Sunday the rounds would announce that the Horizon is going to port at some point for refueling or whatever and that people would be free to go to the planet after their shift. Then you'd have a handy excuse to get off work and a constant anchor ("wanna do something on Sunday?"). What do you guys think?

All is implemented in https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/18570