Setting Exploration - Where Horizon Isn't The Flagship

[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 not a new-NBT proposition, I am not suggesting we switch to this setting now, and I am not trying to start a new SS13 server.
This is very different from my previous thread, it's not an entirely different setting, just a change to the current one.
This is something I've seen quite a few other people propose, or agree with, so I don't think it's just my own idea or opinion.

 

# The basic idea

Horizon is still a SCC ship, just not the most important flagship of the SCC.
It's just a random SCC ship, same as any other in the SCC fleet.
It's kinda as simple as that.

 

# The problem

I think there is a pretty big disconnect between what Horizon is supposed to be in lore, and what it is actually in game, as well as what different players are expecting it to be.

• Some people want to play a character that is at peak of their career in the biggest organization in the spur, after many many years of education and work experience, clearly winning in life after overcoming all of their difficulties, with this great opportunity to work on the SCC flagship. But then why is SCC hiring all these criminals and anti-corporates and other "bad" origins, why are people dying on every expedition like they're just disposable cannon fodder, why do we get bad gear or supplies sometimes, why is Horizon not really doing many important tasks and mostly just drifting between random planets? Characters like these would fit on Horizon if it was in game as it is presented in lore.
• Some people want to play a character on a shitty corporate ship where everything is awful and dystopic, or maybe they've just been dealt a bad hand are in big debt, or running away from the law. But that doesn't really work, cause horizon is the most important flagship, with the most experimental equipment, everything is fresh and clean, it gets the most important tasks, and should be the most prestigious place you could work on. Characters like these don't really fit on Horizon, but we just suspend our disbelief and play them anyways, cause they are fun concepts.

So basically. Horizon doesn't feel like the important flagship it should be. (But maybe... it just shouldn't be the flagship?)
 

# The solution

One solution is to enforce the important flagship status harder. Ban bad origins, make it so everyone always wears proper uniforms, any kind of insubordination gets you fired, etc; but that'd be bad for a lot of reasons and the majority of players clearly wouldn't want that.

So the better solution, that I propose here, is make Horizon just a SCC ship, same as any other ship in the SCC fleet, and not THE flagship.

This doesn't really disqualify any character concepts, only makes it so the "bad" origins don't require any suspension of disbelief as to why they are here.
And it solves a ton of other small problems that we've always just chosen to ignore. Like why are we sometimes underequipped on expeditions or in normal shifts? Doesn't make much sense if we're the most important flagship, but it's fine if we're just a random ship (more important vessels get better and more gear). Why is Horizon sometimes understaffed? Same thing, it's fine if we're just a random SCC ship - the best crew is transferred to more important ships or stations.

 

One concern with this idea that I see some people mention, is that it would mean there's no logical reason to put horizon in super important lore events. But I very much disagree with that. Horizon would still be a important ship, just not THE most important flagship ever. SCC is powerful, but it still has limited resources, and the explanation of "horizon is the closest available ship capable of doing the job" would always work.

 

Edited December 5 by Dreamix

[hazelmouse]

I agree on all points. SS13 is a shenanigans simulator, I think it'll always give itself best to the workplace it's set on being second-rate rather than the top of its class. It'd make more origins believable and it'd remove the awkward dissonance of trying to play a character down on their luck while they're on a ship that, presumably, would be the apex of their career. 

I don't think making the Horizon one of many ships would be particularly difficult on the lore side, either. It unmoored several years ago, that's plenty of time for the SCC to have prepared several more Venator-class Cruisers alongside the Horizon. Perhaps the Horizon is the prototype that is recently surpassed in the Chainlink's favour by newer shinier ships in the same class?

[Evandorf]

At the end of the day this is an OOC consideration, but would reducing the Horizon's profile unbalance the need to have 3rd party ghost ships avoid conflict with it? We obviously don't want ghost ships fucking up a round just because they can but one of the main IC reasons for it was because of the Horizon's size, armament, and status. With the removal of the Levi and now a sort of downgrade in status it seems like that justification is getting thinner.

[Shimmer]

12 minutes ago, Evandorf said:

At the end of the day this is an OOC consideration, but would reducing the Horizon's profile unbalance the need to have 3rd party ghost ships avoid conflict with it? We obviously don't want ghost ships fucking up a round just because they can but one of the main IC reasons for it was because of the Horizon's size, armament, and status. With the removal of the Levi and now a sort of downgrade in status it seems like that justification is getting thinner.

The reason most ships do not go toe-to-toe with the Horizon is a difference of size rather than status.

Most ghostships are tiny corvettes and modified freighters, meanwhile the Horizon is a cruiser with a massive cannon attached to it (400mm if im not mistaken? its a big fucking gun's the point)

Imagine if modern cargo ships had a battleship cannon turret strapped to the bridge, would dingy boat pirates try their luck on it? Same principle.

[Butterrobber202]

5 hours ago, Dreamix said:

Some people want to play a character that is at peak of their career in the biggest organization in the spur, after many many years of education and work experience, clearly winning in life after overcoming all of their difficulties, with this great opportunity to work on the SCC flagship. But then why is SCC hiring all these criminals and anti-corporates and other "bad" origins, why are people dying on every expedition like they're just disposable cannon fodder, why do we get bad gear or supplies sometimes, why is Horizon not really doing many important tasks and mostly just drifting between random planets? Characters like these would fit on Horizon if it was in game as it is presented in lore.

This would mostly be resolved if we heightened already present policies and forced anti-corporates and bad origins into the worst positions, such as Miner, Techs, Janitors, etc.

[Evandorf]

21 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

The reason most ships do not go toe-to-toe with the Horizon is a difference of size rather than status.

Most ghostships are tiny corvettes and modified freighters, meanwhile the Horizon is a cruiser with a massive cannon attached to it (400mm if im not mistaken? its a big fucking gun's the point)

Imagine if modern cargo ships had a battleship cannon turret strapped to the bridge, would dingy boat pirates try their luck on it? Same principle.

For most ghost ships I agree, but we do have some beefy ones floating around out there. I'm not saying this is a deal breaker, just something to consider.

[Fluffy]

1 hour ago, Shimmer said:

Imagine if modern cargo ships had a battleship cannon turret strapped to the bridge, would dingy boat pirates try their luck on it? Same principle.

Yes actually

[furrycactus]

This smacks of the "NSS Aurora shouldn't be the most important research station anymore" and subsequent conception of the Upsilon which became the #1, time is a flat circle, history is always doomed to repeat itself, etc. etc.

That's not a bad thing though, imo.

I think these are all very good points and that it's overall a very good idea. I think the fact that we already basically did the same thing in the past with the NSS Aurora/Upsilon is a big tell that it's a good move. It explains away all the pitfalls that come about by nature of the game being a game we all play and sometimes get a little silly in.

(Plus I think it'll be very funny if any remaining former-Aurora crew start seething about it happening to them a second time, a bigger-and-better facility/ship one-upping their workplace once again.)

[Dreamix]

9 hours ago, Evandorf said:

At the end of the day this is an OOC consideration, but would reducing the Horizon's profile unbalance the need to have 3rd party ghost ships avoid conflict with it? We obviously don't want ghost ships fucking up a round just because they can but one of the main IC reasons for it was because of the Horizon's size, armament, and status. With the removal of the Levi and now a sort of downgrade in status it seems like that justification is getting thinner.

Horizon would still be representing the strongest organization in the spur. I don't see how it would cause offships to attack Horizon more often if Horizon isn't the flagship anymore.

9 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

This would mostly be resolved if we heightened already present policies and forced anti-corporates and bad origins into the worst positions, such as Miner, Techs, Janitors, etc.

I would be fine with that personally, but how I see it is that the general server population doesn't want that. People don't want all these cool origins (that they've been playing for a long while now) forced into boring and unpopular jobs, or otherwise limited in other ways.

Edited December 6 by Dreamix

[Shimmer]

13 hours ago, Fluffy said:

Yes actually

Note the wording: by mistake, they didn't have advanced sensor reports that tell you the name, size, and capabilities of a ship.

They would never have attacked KNOWING what it what.

[Fluffy]

1 hour ago, Shimmer said:

Note the wording: by mistake, they didn't have advanced sensor reports that tell you the name, size, and capabilities of a ship.

They would never have attacked KNOWING what it what.

A sensor report would tell you that it's a venator-class civilian ship, far as I remember it doesn't tell you that it has 20 cannons strapped ontop of it; as far as the pirates would know, it's a civilian ship that maybe is armed with something to clear hazards in space (if civilian ships all had good armament, the pirates would also have them, they would be out of business otherwise); not to mention, just giving a piece of equipment to a bunch of random people doesn't mean they would use it effectively or get the chance to use it, a somewhat smart pirate would try to approach the ship undetected and board it, at which point your 400mm gun is as good as useless, and since it's presumably full of civilian that would rather have their lifes spared over defending your Amazon Prime™ package, you would just render the cannon inoperable, pocket your bounty and leave

[Shimmer]

1 hour ago, Fluffy said:

A sensor report would tell you that it's a venator-class civilian ship, far as I remember it doesn't tell you that it has 20 cannons strapped ontop of it

If you're unsure, you should double check. Because you're wrong, sensor reports explicitly give you a report for all the armaments visible on a ship. Any ship you can scan will show you what guns it has.

Not only does it mention being a cruiser, it's mentioned as a prototype, and one with NAVAL ballistic weapons. The description is outdated and still mentions the Levi, but I implore you to still read it; do you genuinely think someone on a small pirate skiff is going to KNOWINGLY attack a ship described as 'a line without compare; featuring naval weapon hardpoints'?

Here is a scan of the Canary before anyone says 'Naval just means its attached to a ship!', if it did, why is the canary's "low caliber" rotary cannon not referred to as a 'naval armament'?

 

1 hour ago, Fluffy said:

a somewhat smart pirate would try to approach the ship undetected and board it

You cannot approach the Horizon undetected without antag-level stealth tech that only the mercenary gamemode shows us a non-canon example of, and even then it's up to the antagonist party. Any time the bridge is manned (which realistically it would be at all time), BCs and XOs go to great lengths to identify and IFF ships around them. If you approach the Horizon without identifying yourself, you'll be shot. No, you can't approach it undetected, try it yourself.

If the ship is too small for the 400mm gun to be effective, it's too small to survive a Grauwolf barrage, which is designed specifically for the scenario you're describing - a small skiff rushing towards a much larger ship. You're suggesting someone charge a horse into a line of pikes, it does not end in the horse's favor and anyone with a will to live (aka all ghostroles) will take great care to avoid being shredded.

 

 

 

Out of fear of driving this thread off topic, this is where I'll end the conversation.

Edited December 6 by Shimmer

[Sniblet]

Oh I was about to post the weapons line from the code

Yeah! You can see that Horizon is armed. It's bizarre that it's so vague, I don't know why sensor reports are like that when you'd realistically want your sensors to be designed for detailed readouts on pertinent information like whether a ship will kill you. But, yeah, you can see. And if you're brave enough to try to board a ship that suspiciously has one more gun than it needs to clear meteors, is four times your size and likely four times your complement, greatly outsizes actual freighters, and has like seven dubious hangar doors, you're brave enough to board flagship Horizon and then try to go to ground (this will work, tho).

The fact that Horizon is the flagship has, as far as I can tell, had no effect on the macro plot. Sometimes, we get assigned to missions that the SCC surveyor ghostroles could be doing day-to-day. The rest of the time, we're doing things that should be done by more than one ship. All I've ever felt of the flagship designation's presence is the occasional headscratcher whenever the greimorian hordes arise, hissing, deformed, from the vent systems, seeking to enact mild violence and antisocial behavior; and whenever the Guwan or Cytherean hordes do the same, all of which after corporate has had literal years of notice on which to send an exterminator. I'd have assumed that they wanted their flagship to represent the Conglomerate favorably. Target cares more about its stores.

Edited December 6 by Sniblet