Setting Exploration - Independent Ship, ICV Hedgemaze

[Dreamix]

# What is this
This thread is just an idea, a thought experiment, something I've been thinking about for a while now and wanted to share and discuss.
This is exploration of an alternate game setting, that could exist in the Aurora universe.
I am open to any discussion, critique, suggestions, etc; on the general idea, and the specifics.
This is not a new-NBT proposition, I am not suggesting we switch to this setting, and I am not trying to start a new SS13 server.
Of course, if the community collectively agreed this is better than the current setting, then I would help with the switch, as unlikely as that would be.
 

# The basic idea and lore
Privately-owned freelancer ship, ICV Hedgemaze.
Asset of a independent small company, The Garden, funded by a group of rich people, with the simple goal of getting more rich.
The Garden would not be affiliated with any megacorporation or faction, it would be independent, and the ship's crew would be paid in both cash and in shares of the company.
The ship would take contracts from megacorporations, other companies big or small, nations, factions, etc; as well as do its own thing for The Garden
 

# The ship
I have been mapping this ship lately, ICV Hedgemaze.
I started this, with the simple premise of "exploration ship with a more realistic-ish design", and the following design requirements:

1. Be fully featured, having all the departments and facilities. It shouldn't be tiny like all our third party ships are, it should feel like an actual big and capable ship, just like Horizon.
2. Be generalized enough that it can reasonably do almost anything. This includes exploration, surveying, trade, combat, salvage, etc.
3. Lots of storage spaces and warehouses. This includes propellant/fuel too. This is so it feels and looks like it could operate independently outside of a shipyard for weeks or months.
4. Have externally connected containers, with custom mechanics for a "cargo arm", able to move these containers around, exchange them with other ships and stations, or even drop onto planets to aid with expeditions.
5. Have actual crew quarters for the ship's crew, instead of an abstracted away residental deck. It should support a big crew, and have enough facilities to allow living on the ship day to day.

It is not finished, it is very far from being gameplay ready, and I don't really have any intention of working on it much further. The map is primarily just a quickly made prototype to experiment with ship layouts and designs, that I did just for fun in my free time. It will not be used as an away site or an odyssey mission.
The map screenshots are at the end of this post.
 

# Pros of the setting

1. Being an independent ship, it could take contracts from anyone, and work for competitors, or even hostile factions, across the contracts it takes. It could be delivering supplies to help Fisanduh on one contract, and the next one it could be helping Dominia track down terrorists and smugglers. The next time it could be doing actual pirate work and raiding a megacorporate facility, and another time it could be providing humanitarian aid. The variety of possible contracts it could take, is endless, and it could do a ton of things that a corporate ship couldn't.
2. And so in consequence, a ton more lore could be seen and interacted with in game, that we can't really see with Horizon. It would allow seeing our universe from different and new perspectives, being about as big of a difference as the switch from Aurora station to Horizon ship.
3. Taking contracts could give the ship more purpose to actually existing, and make the standard round-to-round gameplay more busy and meaningful. Staff, event-runners, antags, or even just captains, could be assigning contracts and goals for Hedgemaze to complete, different every round. Currently Horizon isn't doing much outside of events, just orbiting whatever planet we are nearby, not doing anything meaningful.
4. It would promote a better sense of like camaraderie, of people working on the same ship, facing the same hardships, with little outside support. Something that I don't think is really present on Horizon, where people aren't even all hired by the same entity, but for different corporations, just assigned to the same ship for some time, and could be reassigned elsewhere at any time.
5. Characters could be from virtually any background. Dregs, samaritans, queenless, exileds, ex-criminals, actual criminals, anti-corporates, etc. On Horizon, flagship of the SCC, most of these "extreme" backgrounds can already be played, but they require a bit of suspension of disbelief as to why exactly are they hired onto here. But an independent ship? It needs all the crew it can get.
6. The crew actually matters, as it can't just be replaced by any of the millions of other people that work for the megacorporations, or reassigned from thousands of their other ships or facilities.
7. And so, The Garden has to consider the crew's well-being and wishes. Characters get much more agency, and should be able to influence the direction of Hedgemaze. Unlike on Horizon, where command feels like powerless middle managers, who can't decide on anything outside of the current shift they're on.
8. As the crew is paid partly in company shares, they are directly hurt financially if the ship is damaged, or its cargo is stolen away. It gives a ton of weight to antag gimmicks like "EE buys the ship", where characters can't just say "eh whatever, I'll just take the next shuttle to another SCC ship". Or to any pirates or thieves, like in the solarian events, where now the crew can't just go "they're just taking SCC phoron, not mine, so why would I care".
9. Space would feel more dangerous. Pirates won't attack a SCC ship, but an independent one? Sure. Whether there would be more ship combat is a different question, but even just sighting a potentially hostile ship would be more tense, if the possibility of getting attacked is real, and not just theoretical.
10. So with all of the points above, I think such setting would allow for much more creativity and freedom in character creation, and it would make these characters' presence feel much more meaningful and important.

# Cons of the setting

1. Obviously, loses a lot of the corporate feels and vibes, of working for the huge megacorporations, being just a tiny cog in the machine. Although, characters could still come from megacorp backgrounds, just not be actively working for them. 
2. Loses some character backgrounds. Vaurca I think would be the most hurt, cause they have big ties to the megacorps. Queenless Vaurca would be great on Hedgemaze, however.
3. Megacorp lore potentially loses some relevancy. It would still be useful to all the characters that used to be corporate, but now work on the Hedgemaze. But generally, I don't think any lore that we currently have would lose much importance or relevancy. All of the lore for species, nations, factions, megacorps, etc; would still be relevant and important, as Hedgemaze could interact with any number of them as it takes on contracts, and characters could use them as their backgrounds or backstories.
4. Potentially lose some jobs: consular officer, corporate liaison. I have some ideas for keeping them, however. Consular officers could basically just be passengers who are looking out for their nation's people, but otherwise don't have any "power" over the ship. Corporate liaisons could be present on the ship when it is taking contracts from megacorporations, acting as actual liaisons between the ship and the megacorp, which actually gives them more "power" than they have currently on Horizon.

# ICV Hedgemaze map
The images should be below this message. They should be in high resolution and full quality, being 5600x7488 pixels.
But unfortunately, at least for me, both forums and imgur do lower the quality of uploaded images.

So here is a link to these on our main discord: https://discord.com/channels/157516682288562176/1162868440814600232/1270487159404494920
And uploaded onto imgur: https://i.imgur.com/GT5nPZR.jpeg and https://i.imgur.com/RPCiNIv.jpeg

The map is also available to download on my github repo, if anyone wanted to open it up in strongdmm and have a look around.
Here: https://github.com/DreamySkrell/Aurora.3/blob/2024-07-17--mary-in-the-hedgemaze/maps/mary_in_the_hedgemaze.dmm
 

 

Edited December 5 by Dreamix

[Lmwevil]

The map looks incredible I must say. I do love me some good maps.

2zlevels from 1?

[dessysalta]

Disclaimer: I like this a lot and would really like to see something come from it in the long run.

Part of what makes Aurora have weight and feeling is messing with the giant megacorp whose ship you're working on has real value and consequences to it in and outside of the dystopia itself, but I feel that can be a double-edged sword because the argument of "it's a corporate dystopia" tends to get old very quickly (my personal feelings aside, I've noticed a lot of gimmicks go down the drain because this kind of logic is applied arbitrarily; back when discussion of characters being awarded ICly and general character-canonicity was of note, I mentioned how it's strange you can't play a former League affiliate or member but you can play an IPC that was at one point owned by the SRF, as shown by Gauze if I recall correctly) and there's a limit to what is allowed, and when, on both sides of the player-staff groups when everything has to do with being on the single-most important ship in the Spur. As well, off-ships, that is to say any ship that isn't the Horizon or its sibling ships themselves, have fallen into this "dubiously canon" category where anything done on those ships is heavily scrutinized by virtue of not being on the "main" ship where "real" stuff happens.

That said, working on the Horizon, once you've gotten past the initial charm of a new setting to devote yourself to, has a lot going for it and there are many, many factors that each player and character and frankly department or larger group/clique (IC and OOC) have to keep in mind and flow with or around. If I could summarize the Horizon in one word it would be "conflicting" because there's just so many people from so many groups with so many different avenues and positions to react to or within as well as the blatantly-speciesist, self-centered, politically active and greedy Conglomerate. If that setting is suddenly flipped on its head i.e. there is no real "deterrent" outside of keeping your boss, their boss, and whatever group the Hedgemaze is contracting for that day/month/etc happy, then it could very well run the risk of not just encouraging meaningful characters with grating aspects to them, but instead unrealistic, self-righteous and unpunished people who will, at worst, cause a giant issue administratively ("can I play my 5-time terrorist from the DPRA who thinks IPCs are hot?") and create so much conflict that it becomes untenable and players can't bounce off of one another. Obviously at best it'll open up the floodgates to seeing certain underling groups that otherwise would never ever have a chance on the Horizon be represented on another actually canon ship and in turn have a shitton of more interesting avenues and items associated with them; but plan for the worst, hope for the best.

The first thing this setting will promote (which I'm all for, frankly) is the creation of characters with even less of a filter or limit; this means just like you said, more Samaritans, queenless, convicts, anti-corporates, terrorists, Exclusionists, ex-successor state members, Universalists, and much more. However, the problem stems from managing these groups in a cohesive and reasonable manner. Self-antagonism would rise a lot and there would need to be failsafes in place both ICly and OOCly to prevent this from happening to a degree that makes it unrealistic or a slog for everyone who isn't part of a given character's group. Of course the initial argument is "doing something extreme here has much less value than if it was on a ship that's politically aligned", but then there would need to be footnotes as to how the Hedgemaze operates and if it's such a big contractor ship whether or not the rest of the political entities of the Spur would recognize it that way.

The last concern to come to mind is a fear that with this new freedom to play practically anyone from anywhere it's going to reduce the interactions that these people would otherwise generate on the Horizon. There will be much less scrutiny for being a Universalist or by loudly proclaiming that you think organics suck ass and would totally be part of the Exclusionists if you found yourself on one of their ships, you won't be punished (or at least will be punished to a much lesser degree) for crying for the wanton murder of political or corporate figures or even some people on the ship if you play your cards right. These groups that exist to drive conflict and have real consequences on the Horizon may just be sidelined or even become the norm, therefore reducing their weight and jeopardizing all the themes and risks associated with them. Hammertails, the two big religious groups I keep mentioning, pirates (from everywhere), exiles, not necessarily anti-corporate groups but definitely the extremists that are a part of them. Their conflict wouldn't go away, but it would be molded into something entirely different, which again can either be great and interesting or mediocre and lackluster.

Onto the good and my own thoughts:

I've talked with a few people on the creation of another server (whether based on/in another server's setting or otherwise) where instead of working for a massive political/corporate entity you're instead working for an independent one. I can't think of any off the top of my head that promote this (Bay is a similar setting to Aurora but more militaristic, Sojourn is working for a colony rather than contracting for various groups, pretty much every single TG downstream that made an HRP variant is the same old station-bound stuff and usually still with an emphasis on Nanotrasen/NanoTrasen, and from what I've seen of the "no no" servers they don't promote setting interaction so much as they do character interaction) except for Shiptest. I recently took a break from Aurora after going through some mental health issues and I tried out Shiptest as part of that break. Holy fuck. It was so much fun. Of course there were still limits and I have my own critique on how their setting handles conflict (that is, it doesn't, generally speaking; the most you can really do is lay claim to a salvage and shoot whomever tries to take it from you, but this is my own experience and I've heard it's not all that) but their setting promotes and engages with concepts and groups would otherwise fall to the wayside if only localized to a distinct one-faction ship. 

For those unaware, Shiptest lets you "buy" (they're free, don't worry) ships if you have enough playtime to captain them, and each ship is mapped to be part of a certain faction (or independent). You have the New Gorlex Republic, a nation-state established by the now-defunct Gorlex Marauders, who seek to maintain the ceasefire with Nanotrasen and ideally foster relations among foreigners. Then you have the Inteq Risk Management Group, basically their version of the PMCG that operates off a strict hierarchy and was made from ex-Syndie and ex-NT contractors. You have the Gorlex Hardliners, people who still believe in fucking with Nanotrasen despite the ceasefire, or the Pan-Gazena Federation, a large semi-militant entity and government that has their version of Unathi alongside their version of Ethereals, or Nanotrasen ships, or the million subfactions and groups underneath each corporate/political group, or independent ships with a grab-bag of miscreants from literally everywhere. It's all the good stuff about offships with none of the bad.

This setting promotes average dudes, but also extremists, those that find themselves in the middle of the climate or completely outside of it. You don't need to worry about being too grating to the rest of the crew because in most instances it won't come up or they'll be on your side anyways. Independents in particular have a huge amount of diversity; I played an ex-pirate standing next to, and working with a retired Colonial Minuteman (basically their version of the police but with more guns). Even on the faction-aligned ships, you can play ex-members or retired members from the other party; I like playing as a Syndicate refugee who would otherwise be dead to rights had they been found by any other entity; but corporate greed still exists, so they can be hired by Nanotrasen, or Inteq, or whatever. Frankly we already see this on Aurora, too, with the freebooter and cargo freighters. I've had some really damn good rounds with ships like that. It doesn't take that much to moderate, but I also realize that's an established server with a whole system for doing those things and revolving around it.

All of this is to say that a setting/server/ship that has these qualities and promotes them 24/7 instead of being on uptimes or at the whims of ghost role selection would be cool as fuck and I want to see it.

[Dreamix]

4 hours ago, Lmwevil said:

The map looks incredible I must say. I do love me some good maps.

2zlevels from 1?

Indeed, on the pics there are two zlevels, bottom deck zlevel 1 being on the left, top deck zlevel 2 on the right.
The top deck on the right is taken with "multiz rendering" enabled in strongdmm, where transparent turfs (like open space) show stuff on the zlevel below. So that for example, you can see the garden under the bar, in one of the biodomes.

 

4 hours ago, dessysalta said:

The first thing this setting will promote (which I'm all for, frankly) is the creation of characters with even less of a filter or limit; this means just like you said, more Samaritans, queenless, convicts, anti-corporates, terrorists, Exclusionists, ex-successor state members, Universalists, and much more. (...)

When I was listing this in that point in the main post, I meant that they would be more justified to be on Hedgemaze, not that there would be no filter or limit as to how "extreme" they can be, or that more of them would be present on the ship. They would still have to be reasonable and professional enough to be hired and work here, do their jobs and support the ship, and not clash too badly with other crew. People that are openly like "hey let's literally kill all corporates/dominians/solarians/synthetics/whatever" ideally wouldn't be hired, cause it would hurt the mission and bring crew morale and cohesion down.

Almost all of these can work on Horizon already, and I don't think it causes a lot of problems coming from it. But the difference is that on Horizon, flagship of the SCC, they require a bit of suspension of disbelief as to why are they hired onto here. That suspension of disbelief is, of course, entirely reasonable and understandable, cause "realistically" SCC would only hire bieselites, solarians, eridanians, all humans and maybe some skrell, but that would be very boring and we don't want that. On an independent ship, it's not a problem, and it doesn't require any suspension of disbelief.

 

4 hours ago, dessysalta said:

The last concern to come to mind is a fear that with this new freedom to play practically anyone from anywhere it's going to reduce the interactions that these people would otherwise generate on the Horizon (...) Their conflict wouldn't go away, but it would be molded into something entirely different, which again can either be great and interesting or mediocre and lackluster.

That is a concern, yeah. But at worst, I don't think it would be too different from Horizon. Most of the conflict you list is between characters, and it would still be present on this independent ship. But here it would be more personal as in "if you scream you hate all solarians then maybe some day they'll just group up and throw you out of an airlock", and less "you'll be hit by an IR and suspended for a week".

I think an equivalent of CCIAA/HRA should still exist though, cause there has to be someone to handle personnel management, hire and fire people, and process incident reports. It is an independent ship, but it's not like, lawless, outside of civilization. It can't work and complete contracts, if the crew is constantly fighting amongst each other, spending more time arguing than doing useful things.

And ideally, yeah, I think there would still be conflict, just different. And a better sense of like camaraderie, of people working on the same ship, facing the same hardships, with little outside support. Something that I don't think is really present on Horizon, where people aren't even all hired by the same entity, but for different corporations, just assigned to the same ship for some time, and could be reassigned elsewhere at any time.

 

4 hours ago, dessysalta said:

(Shiptest)

That sounds neat and interesting, thank you for sharing.

 

Edited August 7 by Dreamix

[hazelmouse]

I don't have much to contribute for discussion, but the idea of this kind of ship is extremely compelling to me. It's been striking how much more freedom, and how many more origins and concepts, I can explore when spawning into an ship like the freighter than I could ever with a Horizon character. The setting of an independent vessel with no particular allegiances or significance seems like it might fit a ship setting better than a gigantic corporate power projection that needs to be carefully slotted into the lore to go anywhere or do anything.

[Sniblet]

CEV Eris moment?

(RU/EN MRP server in an apocalyptic setting where you’re on an independently owned ship as disparate, competing, politically opposed corporate contractors working solely for the ship’s owner, and you’re basically in the Eye of Terror so your corporate masters cannot reach you and your sanity is always crumbling; self-antag is inevitable and not particularly discouraged)

I get the same vibe of these groups who ought to want to kill each other, sharing a space and failing to go into hot war just because they’re paid better than they could hope for otherwise. An Aurora implementation would probably be less chaotic than that, but the similarities are out there.

On first reading, I thought Hedgemaze could work as an alt map, another thing we vote on before the round: Horizon or Hedgemaze? But the rules would have to be different between ships, and you can’t play the same character on both ships if both ships share a canon, so a separate server would be almost as practical. Which is to say, not really practical.

While I don’t imagine it being particularly corporate-endorsed, I could see the ship having a corporate presence. Security officers may have Zavodskoi’s name written somewhere in the legal maze of their contracts, if not literally wear the uniform. The Garden would find it hard to rope in professionals that don’t owe anything to the masters of the galaxy. If they want to stay independent, they should keep it unofficial, though.

Hedgemaze is a very cool name.

Edited August 7 by Sniblet

[HanSolo1519]

The discussion and concerns are worth having, however, the setting and map is really cool. Good job!

I really like how this looks, especially how different some areas feel (The biodome-greenhouse areas versus the cubical rooms, hallways, etc) It looks very varied

Edited August 7 by HanSolo1519

[rrrrrr]

This is absolutely amazing!

The ship itself looks great; love the massive propellant tanks, love that you need to do EVA to set up thrust, love that there are huge, noticeable radiators on the sides of the ship... and the docks being on the fore? Oh man. This here is one believable space ship. Love it.

[wowzewow]

This post is in two parts, the map and the concept, so I'll review them seperately.

The Map

Honestly, I think it's due to remap the Horizon - it still hasn't shaken off the technical debt of NBT and how hastily cobbled together and rehashed it all was.

It's a vast improvement over the "Station-on-Wheels" that is the current Horizon, which is as aesthetic as a brick. It actually looks like a ship!

However, it does need to be pared down a few notches, size-wise. Which could be done by smaller decks, more floors.

Still - it's too early to make decisive criticism, because with a map as large as this, it very much needs a review-by-committee and due process.

The Concept

Good concept, and pushes the envelope - although it needs to be reeled back a bit.

I like the idea of an independent ship - players should have a greater stake in their workplace and their RP enviroment, after all.

(We could have very meta discussions on map design like the Stupid Tree, but in canon)

But, I do not think ditching megacorporate hegemony is the way to go.

Personally, a large part of why we've moved towards this is because of how stifling the old "Everyone is Nanotrasen" setting was.

Now, we're trading a blanket "Everyone's Nanotrasen" with "Everyone's Independent".

There isn't very particularly interesting about "EVERYONE WE ARE NANOTRASEN TOGETHER KILL ANTAGS!!"

compared to "Hey. We're both Zavodskoi here, turn the other eye, let's team up against that Idris guy instead"

 

Another reiterated problem is authority and stakes.

If everyone's independent, there isn't really much reason to listen to authority RP-wise other than a personal agreement between everyone, which is fragile at best.

Honestly : It isn't that hard of a problem to solve - Megacorporations *should* have moderate authority - it's just that characters have a more outsized investment in the ship altogether - something akin to owning stocks in your own company IRL. You are still very much behooved to your corporate master. It's just that you're so far out in the Spur that you're (mostly) free of corporate authority and oversight that you're granted some more autonomy over other ships.

Frankly, I'm just rather dissapointed at how much of a backseat the Megacorporations have taken all this time. There's a lot of interesting intra-ship conflict and flashpoints that doesn't even need antags to start, but are woefully underutillized, e.g. Corporation vs Corporation disagreements - profit over friends, etc. There's a reason why Revolution is such a compelling gamemode.
 

Edited August 8 by wowzewow

[Dreamix]

12 hours ago, Sniblet said:

While I don’t imagine it being particularly corporate-endorsed, I could see the ship having a corporate presence. Security officers may have Zavodskoi’s name written somewhere in the legal maze of their contracts, if not literally wear the uniform. The Garden would find it hard to rope in professionals that don’t owe anything to the masters of the galaxy. If they want to stay independent, they should keep it unofficial, though.

Hedgemaze is a very cool name.

I considered an independent ship that has megacorp crew, hired or loaned for some time, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it should be either fully independent (like Hedgemaze) or fully corporate (like Horizon), otherwise it's kinda the worst of both worlds:

• The ship isn't fully independent, so it can't do actually independent things like acting against megacorps or megacorp-friendly nations. Or if it does things like that, it would have to be super secret so megacorps don't find out, and it would generate very uninteresting conflict for characters and players ("I work for Orion but we're stealing from them... why shouldn't I just take the next shuttle off this ship and tell Orion?").
• And the ship isn't really corporate, so there's none of these grim corporate vibes that some people like, or stuff like corporate liaisons make little sense to be on some random independent ship, and these zavodskoi officers are only "zavodskoi" by uniform and other accessories but otherwise don't really answer to zavod.

I do think Hedgemaze is a cool name. I like getting creative with ship names, another one I really like is "Double Rainbow" on the SCC Scout Ship that I added a while ago.
I find it a sad how "Horizon" or "Intrepid" are just like the most generic inoffensive names you could find in any random scifi work (there's actually ships with these names in Star Trek for example). There's no creativity here, and they're not even cool references cause names like these have been used a million times in different scifi works or in real life - it's just boring and uninteresting.

Edited August 8 by Dreamix

[Dreamix]

7 hours ago, wowzewow said:

The Map

Honestly, I think it's due to remap the Horizon - it still hasn't shaken off the technical debt of NBT and how hastily cobbled together and rehashed it all was.
It's a vast improvement over the "Station-on-Wheels" that is the current Horizon, which is as aesthetic as a brick. It actually looks like a ship!
However, it does need to be pared down a few notches, size-wise. Which could be done by smaller decks, more floors.
Still - it's too early to make decisive criticism, because with a map as large as this, it very much needs a review-by-committee and due process.
 

I very much agree with you about Horizon - "station-on-wheels" is a good way to describe it. It doesn't look or feel like a spaceship; I could list lots and lots of reasons as to why, but I think it would be a bit off-topic here.

The map of Hedgemaze that I made isn't perfect either, though, I agree as well. It's actually pretty bad if you take a closer look - super long hallways, maintenance spaces that go nowhere, pretty bad department inter-connectivity.
But the point of that mapping exercise was to include the design requirements I wrote about in the opening post in the thread, like being a ship that actually looks and feels like a ship, etc; and I think I accomplished that well. If I were to try mapping this again, starting over from scratch, I'd add another deck on the bottom that's mostly just maintenance and storage spaces, and make the ship a bit more wide and a bit less long, with all departments connecting to some "central ring" like on Horizon.

 

7 hours ago, wowzewow said:

The Concept

Good concept, and pushes the envelope - although it needs to be reeled back a bit.
I like the idea of an independent ship - players should have a greater stake in their workplace and their RP enviroment, after all.
(We could have very meta discussions on map design like the Stupid Tree, but in canon)

But, I do not think ditching megacorporate hegemony is the way to go.
Personally, a large part of why we've moved towards this is because of how stifling the old "Everyone is Nanotrasen" setting was.
Now, we're trading a blanket "Everyone's Nanotrasen" with "Everyone's Independent".
There isn't very particularly interesting about "EVERYONE WE ARE NANOTRASEN TOGETHER KILL ANTAGS!!"
compared to "Hey. We're both Zavodskoi here, turn the other eye, let's team up against that Idris guy instead"

Another reiterated problem is authority and stakes.
If everyone's independent, there isn't really much reason to listen to authority RP-wise other than a personal agreement between everyone, which is fragile at best.
(...)

I touched on this on these concerns in previous posts of mine in this thread. I think the ship should be either fully independent, or fully corporate, otherwise it's like the worst of both worlds, neither being independent nor corporate.

I do think everyone being independent is interesting, I think it'd help with crew cohesion with everyone being in it together, facing the same hardships and problems. Currently, we have all these corporations on Horizon (even further splintered in PMCG with all its different contractors), and sometimes it feels like a random collection of people working in the same building, rather than crew of one ship. Everyone gets their paycheck from different corporations, talks to different corporate liaisons, wears different uniforms, and can be reassigned out of Horizon at any time. I see very little conflict on megacorporate grounds, and I even see people to pick their corporation based on aesthetics of their uniforms rather what the corporation represents. I think a lot of conflict on Horizon is inter-personal, and an independent ship would only reinforce that and give it more weight.

I don't think authority or stakes would be a problem, or maybe I don't understand what you mean here, but as I described in the opening post, Hedgemaze wouldn't be like, lawless. It's still part of a small company with actual leadership, it's not just the crew doing whatever they want alone on the ship. The crew are still here to earn credits, and are even paid partly with shares in the company. If they don't listen to authority or do their job well, then the crew as a whole is directly affected by that, with their wallets becoming lighter and their shares losing value, or even things actually getting dangerous if maintenance is behind or security does not want to deter pirates.

If anything, I think this is less fragile than the situation on Horizon. If Horizon does its a bad job with whatever assignment it got, or pirates come to steal corporate stuff, or whatever else; then the crew is not really directly affected, except for IRs, but only affecting those to blame for letting it happen, but even that is not guaranteed. There's little reason for the average non-command crew to even care about whether Horizon does well or not - they're not even working for SCC, after all, but for Idris or Zavod or whatever.

 

Edited August 8 by Dreamix

[Carver]

I want to address the thought of these suggested changes and how they’d interact with backgrounds, crew and camaraderie (points 4-6). Forgive me that I’m on mobile rn so I can’t be particularly eloquent.

I would think, if a character in the current setting doesn’t feel camaraderie toward others, why would that change with this new ship? We already go through pretty extreme stuff (mutiny, boardings by the Trinary and Elyra and others, horrible expeditions) that more or less offers the ceiling of what realistically could produce a sense of camaraderie.

Leading into the next point, if I’m surrounded by a bunch of felons and other terrible people, why would I feel a greater sense of camaraderie? A lot of these backgrounds are already playable, and tend to heavily grate against each other and the more normal crew. I feel like I’d have a harder time finding common ground with others in the crew playing a normal old fellow when there’s a greater amount of backgrounds that the average person in the Spur would be inclined to heavily dislike.

That leads into the next point. If this ship has an easier time hiring any old piece of shit ex-con or what have you, why would it be hard to replace crew? When you have no standards, it’s actually pretty darn easy to find new people, Scalebeard the Pirate isn’t going to care about working on a ship with a shitty reputation when his head is wanted in three systems (extreme example of course, but this applies to the lesser cases like Queenless, Dregs and Guwan as well who don’t have many good work opportunities anyways).

 

I’m not against the idea of a setting change, but I don’t think this independent thing is really adding anything to my crew interactions compared to the present. I really worry that the opposite would happen and my characters would have a lot, lot harder time finding common ground with others. That sort of thing would more than likely push me further away from wanting to play than anything else. At the heart of it, the main reason I play Aurora rn is for the crew interactions.

[Dreamix]

30 minutes ago, Carver said:

I would think, if a character in the current setting doesn’t feel camaraderie toward others, why would that change with this new ship? We already go through pretty extreme stuff (mutiny, boardings by the Trinary and Elyra and others, horrible expeditions) that more or less offers the ceiling of what realistically could produce a sense of camaraderie.

I guess it's a bit hard for me to explain, and "camaraderie" is a bit of a vague vibes-and-feelings based concept, but the extreme events you mention I think generate "active" camaraderie, with the people you actively interacted with these events, who maybe saved you from harm, or you helped them, etc. This is how I feel at least, having played these events, they don't really generate a longer-lasting sense of "we're in this together", if that makes sense.

I think an independent ship would allow for more "passive" camaraderie, a more mundane and everyday one. You are in this together with all these other crew, facing the same hardships, answering to the same leadership, and working in the same company. Your problems affect them, and their problems affect you, even if indirectly.

Unlike on Horizon, where everyone gets their paycheck from different corporations, talks to different corporate liaisons, wears different uniforms, and can be reassigned out of Horizon at any time. I wrote more on this in my previous post replying to wowzewow/Wezzy.

 

30 minutes ago, Carver said:

Leading into the next point, if I’m surrounded by a bunch of felons and other terrible people, why would I feel a greater sense of camaraderie? A lot of these backgrounds are already playable, and tend to heavily grate against each other and the more normal crew. I feel like I’d have a harder time finding common ground with others in the crew playing a normal old fellow when there’s a greater amount of backgrounds that the average person in the Spur would be inclined to heavily dislike.

That leads into the next point. If this ship has an easier time hiring any old piece of shit ex-con or what have you, why would it be hard to replace crew? (...)

I've already touched on this in my second post in this thread: "I meant that they would be more justified to be on Hedgemaze, not that there would be no filter or limit as to how "extreme" they can be, or that more of them would be present on the ship. They would still have to be reasonable and professional enough to be hired and work here, do their jobs and support the ship, and not clash too badly with other crew. (...)".

As for the question of "why would it be hard to replace crew". A small independent company just does not have all the backbone infrastructure and reach that megacorps have. If Horizon's crew somehow all collectively decided to quit, SCC could find a new crew in a day, as they don't even need to hire new people and train them specifically for this ship. They have facilities and ships all over the spur to reassign people from, people who are fully trained and proven to be capable.

Edited August 8 by Dreamix

[Carver]

I still don’t really know what to think. I said it before but I’d be worried that I’d have a harder time building even a passive camaraderie if the crew was more commonly filled with the oddball/outlier/‘contrarian’ backgrounds if I just wanted to play a more run of the mill character, it can already be hard as-is finding common ground with crew playing a pro-corpo character even though we’re on ostensibly the most corporate ship in the Spur.

Further, it doesn’t feel too hard as-is to justify playing an oddball because money is a fairly universal motivator, and we support it with a few amoral hiring backgrounds (Orion, Ringspire, ostensibly the Phalanx, ostensibly NanoTrasen+Nexus as a holdover from the old maps where it was the only player corp, etc. etc.) that take almost anyone.

I truly get why you want it theme-wise, I’m just concerned that I’d lose what I enjoy about the current setting. It sounds like as-is lore is already making strides to push the Horizon toward wider event variety with the mention of a Phoron crisis rework/update.

 

And as a complete aside, I do like the map but I have critique with materializing the quarters. The residential deck lets people work a lot, lot more with their imagination in regard to RP and the like - especially for those of us who are funny textRPers. I don’t really see a positive to making it a thing in the round, most of the more slice of life RP you’d want to do in that sort of setting doesn’t benefit from the average round happenings (Greimorians, antags, power loss, whatever have you) and there wouldn’t really be much room to customize your quarters to suit a character.

To me, the existing abstraction of the crew deck is its greatest feature.

[WickedCybs]

I think the concept could make for a cool connected server or something along that line that uses Aurora's lore. Applying it to Aurora itself though, it would be such a massive change that I don't believe it'd be even right to refer to it as "Aurora" anymore. Independence is not the silver bullet that would open up a lot more character concepts, opportunities and so on. The charm of Aurora is the corporate setting and the people who exist within it, at least to me anyway. I think a lot of potential characters really aren't going to work on a ship where their standard of living is in constant flux, where it might be even more risky to the point gunrunning and raiding megacorpoate facilities are a few of the potentially expected jobs that you have to consider might be selected. The Horizon has had to take part in violence as well before it's mentioned, but it tends to be treated as exceptional circumstances and it's a lot different from actually signing on to regularly do these things.

So I don't really like this, especially if it would change things here even in a hypothetical. I have played on servers like CEV Eris and can see the appeal of something more HRP in an independent context though. Hard to think of anything that has come close other than maybe Polaris?

Map-wise it looks okay as a proof-of-concept. I think remapping the Horizon to look more like a self sufficient survey vessel along that line would be a good option.

[Kintsugi]

I don't have much to add personally as I haven't really wanted much to do with SS13 at the moment, but I have to say that as an ardent proponent of the independent setting over the corporate setting, I think this concept obviously has a lot of merit.

[Dreamix]

On 10/08/2024 at 04:08, WickedCybs said:

I think the concept could make for a cool connected server or something along that line that uses Aurora's lore. Applying it to Aurora itself though, it would be such a massive change that I don't believe it'd be even right to refer to it as "Aurora" anymore.

I don't think it would be really all that of a massive change, to the point where it wouldn't be "Aurora" anymore:

• Most character concepts would still be valid (with the exception of non-quenless vaurca or owned IPCs).
• Most of Horizon characters could be transferred over with no issue (or with minor retcons).
• All of the event arcs that we've had so far on Horizon could've still worked with an independent ship (of course, with some changes like reducing scale, scope, and importance).
• All of our current lore would still be relevant and important, and none of it would have to be outright thrown away or invalidated. All the nations, factions, corporations, and SCC itself, would still exist.

 

On 10/08/2024 at 04:08, WickedCybs said:

Independence is not the silver bullet that would open up a lot more character concepts, opportunities and so on. The charm of Aurora is the corporate setting and the people who exist within it, at least to me anyway.

For me, the strength is in the people, rather than the corporate aspects of the setting. It's hard for me to describe this right now, but I feel that (outside of stuff like IRs or corporate representatives) these "corporate" aspects are very much left in the background, and only appear when relevant or convenient. This can even be seen on the wiki, where most of our lore is in planets, factions, species, and not in the corporations.

And I even see people even just ignore these corporate aspects, just pick a corporation for their character based on how drippy are their uniforms, or even just ignore uniforms altogether, etc (which is fine of course, for a lot of people IRL a job is just a job and nothing more). Most of the roleplay, gameplay, character arcs, that I see on Horizon, including on extended, could happen on any ship no matter if corporate or independent.

I think also that a lot of corporate-related or corporate-adjacent character concepts would transfer well to a independent ship. For example, characters can still be in debt and desperately trying to pay it off just like on a SCC ship, except that now they can also be running away from that debt, something that can only be done on a independent ship.

 

On 10/08/2024 at 04:08, WickedCybs said:

I think a lot of potential characters really aren't going to work on a ship where their standard of living is in constant flux, where it might be even more risky to the point gunrunning and raiding megacorpoate facilities are a few of the potentially expected jobs that you have to consider might be selected. The Horizon has had to take part in violence as well before it's mentioned, but it tends to be treated as exceptional circumstances and it's a lot different from actually signing on to regularly do these things.

I more meant that these "extreme" things (like piracy) could just be examples of the contracts that this independent ship could take, that Horizon could never really do (outside of maybe noncanon events or Odyssey scenarios). I didn't mean that these would be the everyday bread and butter life of its crew.

Other examples of more "mundane" contracts that an independent ship could do, would be stuff like trade, cargo transport, taking in refugees or passengers, patrolling, escorting or fixing up other ships, etc.

We could have some of these tasks in Odyssey or as away sites with Horizon, sure. But they would fit so much better and more naturally on a independent ship, one that isn't the most important flagship of the conglomerate.

Edited August 12 by Dreamix

[NothingNew]

I may be an outlier in saying that being able to directly choose which corporation you're from as opposed to merely working for Nanotrasen was one of the initial draws of the server for me - That said I do agree that the corporate side of the lore could be more involved at times and that the Horizon doesn't necessarily have to be one of the SCC's most important ships. I very much like the map and the idea of an exploration ship, I'm just not personally convinced on why it would need to be independently operated when a lot of the spur is monopolised by a group of six highly competitive corporations.

[dessysalta]

3 hours ago, NothingNew said:

being able to directly choose which corporation you're from as opposed to merely working for Nanotrasen was one of the initial draws of the server for me

This ship has sailed for me personally because it's devolved into more of the samey faction RP that inundates practically every single roleplay server known to man because they struggle to create conflict outside of "this group hates this other group 99% of the time just because they're this other group". Tajaran and human politics suffer enough from "you're not part of my group, eat shit" and frankly if there could be a new server setting wherein you have at least one less faction-based conflict I would tackle it. A lot of this stems from seeing post-apocalyptic, sci fi, and super hero roleplay servers on Discord use this as a scapegoat for every single event outside of the token single "uh oh, there's a bigger bad" that's instantly defeated and then it's back to hating each other 24/7.

I'm being extremely hyperbolic, I tend not to notice it nowadays short of having a few of my characters badmouth Idris consistently, but for real, having less of the same type of conflict but in a different coat of paint would be nice. Dreamy was onto something by suggesting that mob justice can be a thing, and the general idea that more "out there" characters who align themselves with and/or have served a problematic faction or group can exist. Being on the "we work for LITERALLY ANYONE at ANY TIME" ship would deter too much "you're not my group, I hate you" nonsense anyways.

This also doesn't mean you can't play a superb corpo rep on the Hedgemaze. An ex-NT, pro-corpo, pro-capitalism doctor might actually be more fun to see on the Hedgemaze rather than the Horizon at least for a little bit given how often we see them nowadays (and it's in the already super-corporate ship, it's not really surprising or charming after a while).

[NothingNew]

3 hours ago, dessysalta said:

I'm being extremely hyperbolic, I tend not to notice it nowadays short of having a few of my characters badmouth Idris consistently, but for real, having less of the same type of conflict but in a different coat of paint would be nice. Dreamy was onto something by suggesting that mob justice can be a thing, and the general idea that more "out there" characters who align themselves with and/or have served a problematic faction or group can exist. Being on the "we work for LITERALLY ANYONE at ANY TIME" ship would deter too much "you're not my group, I hate you" nonsense anyways.

Funnily, I can't say I've ran into one of my characters being disliked due to the company they work for on Horizon - I don't think the use of mob rule will reduce or alter the state of politics/faction in-fighting in the lore necessarily neither, it could very well lead to the possibility of the largest representing group only being present on-ship, or further petty squabbling due to the nature of the illicit activities potentially conducted by the ship (pirates' "no purchase no pay" is stereotypically associated with petty bickering in fiction, where everybody points the finger at someone else) and its lack of official proceedings.

I think such faction-aligned squabbling is more an issue of pre-existing political lore as opposed to the corporate factions themselves, and I think most of it stems from planetary politics than from the corporations people work for. I think this concept has a leaning more toward the potential for eccentric personalities in the lore to the possible detriment of the straight, deadpan personalities and corporate procedure that clash so well with it. I think the server at the moment is in a good sweet spot here in terms of improv where the eccentricity is held within the confines of a corporate setting, where disciplinary actions are enacted with bureaucratic doctrine.

I think there's a lot of entertainment to be had on the server at the moment as either the eccentric instigator or the reactive straight man in such character conflicts.

[Lmwevil]

Question Dreamy, if we ported glass flooring from /tg/station do you think it'd add to the cool factor of this ship? 

Pretty much on tg how it works is glass shows the turf below it zlevelwise, including space (which is great for observation ports) 

 

I beg of you if we're doing a remap please give us the gift of glass flooring for various cool interconnected feelings in some areas without removing walking space.

[Dreamix]

13 minutes ago, Lmwevil said:

Question Dreamy, if we ported glass flooring from /tg/station do you think it'd add to the cool factor of this ship? 

Pretty much on tg how it works is glass shows the turf below it zlevelwise, including space (which is great for observation ports) 

I beg of you if we're doing a remap please give us the gift of glass flooring for various cool interconnected feelings in some areas without removing walking space.

Oh, these would be very neat, even for Horizon.

Though, the idea of that Hedgemaze map in the first post, is more of a quickly made prototype - it would require A LOT of polishing and detail work to actually be playable in game.

[Triogenix]

Okay, there's a ton of stuff here. I'll do a detailed reply later, but there's just a couple things I wanted to hit right off the bat.

On the whole, I am not really opposed to the theoretical idea of an independent setting, I just think there's parts of the greater picture that are understandably missing.

1. Long-term consistency.
To be completely fair, this is something we currently struggle with, a ton. Look at what I'm currently doing as a lore project. That said, generally speaking there's been consistency in the entities from which our characters have employment. Things have changed here and there, but Hephaestus has always been the industrial corp, and Idris the service/banking/mafia one, there hasn't been any major shifts. With having the entity of the garden just be a group of rich people wanting to get more rich, while yes, it opens up a lot of opportunities, it also gives it zero identity, and it would result in a Joesph Dorn type situation where it's written wildly differently by different writers because there's no baseline identity to work from. Yes, while this can happen with the SCC as well, there's much less of a risk because it has a baseline, one that can't really be changed without changing the setting. 

2. The Over-Arching Setting.
What I mean by this is not lore in it's totality, but the overarching setting that characters work under, the SCC through command, HRAs, SCCIAAs, etc. All this and more also needs to be considered, tweaked, and then implemented. Procedures need to be written, etc. etc. At the end of all that, what I see an independent setting becoming is a mono-dominant employer(no matter what we try to call it, this is what it would end up being) throughout all departments(in this case, those working directly with the ship) with a few different contractors scattered throughout specific departments; essentially the old station setting but swapping NT for a non-megacorp, independent entity. Which, don't get me wrong, has some upsides, it's just whether those upsides are worth putting us on the road to, as I see it, a return to the old setting of the station with a new coat of paint.

 

That's all I have for now, and this was a good thought provoking question, and is probably going to be on my mind for the rest of the day. I don't want this coming across as me trying to shoot down your idea, just throwing my two cents in as loremaster, and someone who sees alot more of the behind the scenes management then others. You certainly bring up some good points(like the suspension of disbelief towards certain things no longer being needed with an independent setting) and how corporations kinda aren't present anyway. Definitely something for me to think about.

[Dreamix]

6 hours ago, Triogenix said:

1. Long-term consistency.
To be completely fair, this is something we currently struggle with, a ton. Look at what I'm currently doing as a lore project. That said, generally speaking there's been consistency in the entities from which our characters have employment. Things have changed here and there, but Hephaestus has always been the industrial corp, and Idris the service/banking/mafia one, there hasn't been any major shifts. With having the entity of the garden just be a group of rich people wanting to get more rich, while yes, it opens up a lot of opportunities, it also gives it zero identity, and it would result in a Joesph Dorn type situation where it's written wildly differently by different writers because there's no baseline identity to work from. Yes, while this can happen with the SCC as well, there's much less of a risk because it has a baseline, one that can't really be changed without changing the setting. 

Initially, when I was thinking about this idea, I thought it should just be a small group of unnamed rich people who own the company and Hedgemaze, and don't really appear publicly or on the ship, which is why I have not focused on them at all, beyond just giving the company a name, The Garden.

But now, I think it would be much more interesting, if the owners had names, personalities, etc. And most importantly, their own goals as to what The Garden, and Hedgemaze, should be doing. Goals that may not align with the other owners, or be conflicting. I think this could give some identity to the owners, and give them simple "baselines" to work from. Perhaps, one owner could be very pro-corporate, and wish to move the company closer to megacorporations, while another could be the opposite, and prefer independence, or even to harm megacorporations. And this could affects events or contracts, too, or offer Hedgemaze (and the players) multiple ways to complete them, with different consequences.

For example, we could find some abandoned NT facility, but with some research equipment still left there. We could recover it, and give it to the nearest NT facility, to score some points with megacorporations, and make the pro-corporate owner satisfied, who could later host a party on Hedgemaze as a thank you to the crew. Or maybe we could sell that research equipment, making the anti-corporate owner more happy. Or we could take it for ourselves, but report the facility to NT still, as more of a neutral option.

And this could allow the company's owners to be more personal and closer to the crew and players. They could board the ship for briefings, host parties, announce things, make appearances. Right now we do have all these CEOs, but they may as well not even know that Horizon exists. It makes little sense for them to visit Horizon or address the crew directly, cause presumably they have more important jobs to do, like running their corporations. And SCC itself, I don't think has a lot of identity itself, being a tiny group with a small number of ships, and small number of direct employees, who aren't even actually working for SCC but are loaned by the other corporations.

 

7 hours ago, Triogenix said:

2. The Over-Arching Setting.
What I mean by this is not lore in it's totality, but the overarching setting that characters work under, the SCC through command, HRAs, SCCIAAs, etc. All this and more also needs to be considered, tweaked, and then implemented. Procedures need to be written, etc. etc. At the end of all that, what I see an independent setting becoming is a mono-dominant employer(no matter what we try to call it, this is what it would end up being) throughout all departments(in this case, those working directly with the ship) with a few different contractors scattered throughout specific departments; essentially the old station setting but swapping NT for a non-megacorp, independent entity. Which, don't get me wrong, has some upsides, it's just whether those upsides are worth putting us on the road to, as I see it, a return to the old setting of the station with a new coat of paint.

I don't think it would necessarily become a mono-dominant employer, returning to the old station setting where it's all just NT. Or if it were to be a mono-dominant employer, I think this setting could offer something different still. You're not just working for The Garden, you're also working for yourself, and have direct stakes in the ship's survival and prosperity.

I do think the different corporation choices as they are on Horizon, are very nice, and offer a lot of cool character backstory or roleplay opportunities. An Idris security officer feels very different from a PMCG mercenary, for example. But this could transfer well to an independent ship - it'd just be ex-Idris vs ex-PMCG, and the dynamics between characters wouldn't change at all.

But I don't think they're used to full potential. Other than different uniforms or corporate representatives, it still kinda feels like we're working for a mono-dominant employer. We are on a SCC ship, we answer to SCC, get announcements from SCC, represent SCC, our IRs are handled by SCC staff, etc. There's very little organizational conflict between corporations that could be seen on Horizon. We don't have events where we can, let's say, pick whether to help NT or Zeng, angering the other.

 

7 hours ago, Triogenix said:

That's all I have for now, and this was a good thought provoking question, and is probably going to be on my mind for the rest of the day. I don't want this coming across as me trying to shoot down your idea, just throwing my two cents in as loremaster, and someone who sees alot more of the behind the scenes management then others. You certainly bring up some good points(like the suspension of disbelief towards certain things no longer being needed with an independent setting) and how corporations kinda aren't present anyway. Definitely something for me to think about.

You did bring up potential issues that I haven't thought about, thank you.

I don't want to look like I'm just saying Horizon is dumb and my idea is awesome, either. I do think an independent ship setting would be better and more interesting, but Horizon is nice too, and some of the ideas I present in this thread I think could be used to improve Horizon too.

[WickedCybs]

On 12/08/2024 at 12:01, Dreamix said:

I don't think it would be really all that of a massive change, to the point where it wouldn't be "Aurora" anymore:

• Most character concepts would still be valid (with the exception of non-quenless vaurca or owned IPCs).
• Most of Horizon characters could be transferred over with no issue (or with minor retcons).
• All of the event arcs that we've had so far on Horizon could've still worked with an independent ship (of course, with some changes like reducing scale, scope, and importance).
• All of our current lore would still be relevant and important, and none of it would have to be outright thrown away or invalidated. All the nations, factions, corporations, and SCC itself, would still exist.

From a character basis I just can't agree with this. The change would be far more extreme than it was when we went from a corporate station to a corporate ship. Back then we kind of traded the more chill "working your nine to five and then clocking out" element for a "dedicated" crew that wasn't going home at the end of every shift. Our factions carried over more or less. There was some continuity there. Your proposal isn't just a clean swap, For most departments it would ask for retcons at best and total character rewrites at worst. Outside of requisitions I really couldn't (personally) say most characters that I have or would make for the Horizon would cleanly transfer to the setting of an independent freighter because they're so different in tone, scope and the life trajectory my characters would envision themselves to be on that it mandates a different approach. 

It's not a bad thing that I'd have to approach it differently mind you, but that's part of why I don't believe this is ever going to fit Aurora specifically. The setting switch is not as clean a swap as it might seem in practice and frankly, it's going to mandate new characters and new perspectives. 

Regarding events, many could still be done but the setting is so corporate dominated it might be a bit much that a random freighter would have the influence to go where the Horizon does. Of course, there's always ways around that.

As for the lore-side, trigo kind of covered that.

On 12/08/2024 at 12:01, Dreamix said:

For me, the strength is in the people, rather than the corporate aspects of the setting. It's hard for me to describe this right now, but I feel that (outside of stuff like IRs or corporate representatives) these "corporate" aspects are very much left in the background, and only appear when relevant or convenient. This can even be seen on the wiki, where most of our lore is in planets, factions, species, and not in the corporations.

And I even see people even just ignore these corporate aspects, just pick a corporation for their character based on how drippy are their uniforms, or even just ignore uniforms altogether, etc (which is fine of course, for a lot of people IRL a job is just a job and nothing more). Most of the roleplay, gameplay, character arcs, that I see on Horizon, including on extended, could happen on any ship no matter if corporate or independent.

I think also that a lot of corporate-related or corporate-adjacent character concepts would transfer well to a independent ship. For example, characters can still be in debt and desperately trying to pay it off just like on a SCC ship, except that now they can also be running away from that debt, something that can only be done on a independent ship.

The corporate aspects generally being in the background is kind of a benefit to me, honestly. While it should be considered more at times, it's very believable a job is a job. You put in the work and think about something else unless you're dedicated or enjoy what you do and so on. Stories of survival can be done on both, but the independent setting slants it further and also begs the question of the how and why they've taken what could be considered more of a risk or uncertainty.

On 12/08/2024 at 12:01, Dreamix said:

I more meant that these "extreme" things (like piracy) could just be examples of the contracts that this independent ship could take, that Horizon could never really do (outside of maybe noncanon events or Odyssey scenarios). I didn't mean that these would be the everyday bread and butter life of its crew.

Other examples of more "mundane" contracts that an independent ship could do, would be stuff like trade, cargo transport, taking in refugees or passengers, patrolling, escorting or fixing up other ships, etc.

We could have some of these tasks in Odyssey or as away sites with Horizon, sure. But they would fit so much better and more naturally on a independent ship, one that isn't the most important flagship of the conglomerate.

Fair enough. I still don't like the idea of ever having things like piracy even as a remote possibility of a potential contract to take but the more mundane stuff could hit better here and reminds me of King of The World on the station map, where we had a lot of random events in the pool kind of similar (random refugees boarding to take care of, wounded ERT that needs a resupply, so on).

I don't believe that it'd end up working out better just because the ship is independent though. The Horizon not being independent is kind of exactly why it has "room" to be flexible outside of events, because they're given leeway. The independent has less support, more of a cost to wasting their own time but that's kind of a different conversation and kind of nitpicky ultimately tbh.

Now, all things considered. I still think most problems this thread could be handled better by retooling the Horizon and some of the lore behind it. We don't need to be the "Flagship" and we shouldn't have ever been it in my opinion. We also don't need to be the "rejects" like how many considered the NSS Aurora to be, true or not.

Edited August 14 by WickedCybs
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