Tighten Command's ability to exclude crew from Odysseys

[Fluffy]

4 minutes ago, N8-Toe said:

[...]

You're missing the key point: They're needed to be there, which is why they're being sent there - someone has to go down the depth and build thing is there because there's something that needs to be built, the sailor is there because the ship needs sailing. A bartender isn't there because in the middle of the somali pirate infested sea there's no compelling need to serve a Manhattan, there's no neurosurgeon, there's no pharmacist, there's no a lot of things that aren't needed to be there, there's only what is needed to be there

There is no problem sending eg. engineers if you need a long-term base built on Hivebot Prime or whatever, even if there's a (reasonable) risk, they are needed to do something, so they have a reason to be there, protected by Security - that is the equivalent of what you're indicating in your example

 

You can abolutely build a big plot like the one you're describing, you start with "we needs a party thrown, send down people to setup a party house and prepare a party", at which point the Horizon would send engineers to build it, security to kill xenofauna, mining to clear up the soon-to-be frat house, cooks to cook the party things, bartender to bartender, operations would haul the things needed to and from the horizon etc. etc. - After that, you can pop up with Mechafrost escorted by 3 John Sol, ground the shuttle and take everyone hostage or what have you. You can pick this story apart. Don't. It's just an example

On the other hand, investigating facility X for possible crimes against humanity doesn't need a bartender, or a cook, or operations or the likes, and it's possibly unsafe, so you would send security, possibly an FR, and science if the crime has something to do with scientific research or similar. You'd not send the cook, or the bartender, or an engineer (unless they have to break something open), or operations, in such a story

[N8-Toe]

So awhile back when we were still on the Aurora there was a movement against rounds that went like this for non sec/command. You would be minding your own business as a doctor, engineer, whatever.. and it'd go to code blue. If anything was said it was "Something is happening", than perhaps later code red, announcement saying get out of the halls.. you'd hear shooting in the distance maybe. if your med someone would show up cuffed, in and out before you could really talk. than code green. You'd have to pull teeth basically to get sec to tell you what was going on, let alone get you in on the action. 

Thankfully, we moved away from this as a sever and have a culture more focused on "Yes and" RP when it comes to involvement. Sending the bare minimum needed crew for a mission and no more is OOC'ly crap. When things happen on the ship, when there's a hostage situation on the ship, its there, its down the hall, its happening and on radio, even if your the bartender your affected by its proximity. People can stage, they can prep, command may be there organizing, its a place to be, and a place to RP or be involved in RP. Odessey if we're moving to the idea of its proper, and if anything logical to use the minimal teams needed, this is gone. Its happening off ship, away from here. My round as the engineer who didn't get picked to go play with sec is I spend 2 hours just... hanging out? while other people are involved in a cool story I can't play with. 

Back to the ship example, IRL ships have cooks. its some guys job to make pancakes for people in pirate and contested waters. its some guys job on the Horizon to build forward bases in a possibly dangerous environment, even without a gun. Thats reasonable. I think if we need more "IC logic" to have people going. Lean into it being an exploration ship, maybe everyone who wants to go on a mission has completed a 1 - 2 week safety and basic survival course or something idk. To stave off accusations of this making the ship militarized or giving people an excuse to be a John sol badass, Cruise ship hotel staff usually have five days at least of training on personal survival, first aid, fire suppression, and similar skills. it wouldn't be much to say the company trains people the basics of "Don't wander off into the woods alone" "Don't pet strange alien creatures" "Don't get in the space shuttle marked "Free Phoron". 

I keep repeating the phrase "Optimizing ourselves out of fun", and that's because that is what this is. It's defeating the chance for fun stories. I've said my piece, so im going to stop with this post. I appreciate you replying and discussing this with me. Just don't want to clog up with us going in a circle. 

 

 

[Fluffy]

2 hours ago, N8-Toe said:

So awhile back when we were still on the Aurora there was a movement against rounds that went like this for non sec/command. You would be minding your own business as a doctor, engineer, whatever.. and it'd go to code blue. If anything was said it was "Something is happening", than perhaps later code red, announcement saying get out of the halls.. you'd hear shooting in the distance maybe. if your med someone would show up cuffed, in and out before you could really talk. than code green. You'd have to pull teeth basically to get sec to tell you what was going on, let alone get you in on the action. 

Thankfully, we moved away from this as a sever and have a culture more focused on "Yes and" RP when it comes to involvement. Sending the bare minimum needed crew for a mission and no more is OOC'ly crap.

You mean the "militarizing"? Yea, all of that was making sense in a paramilitary structure, where everyone know how to hold a gun and use it, and could be made to become part of the fighting force if needed. It doesn't in a civilian ship where your cook knows how to cook and maybe pull the fire alarm when the space carp tries to make him its meal

2 hours ago, N8-Toe said:

Odessey if we're moving to the idea of its proper, and if anything logical to use the minimal teams needed, this is gone. Its happening off ship, away from here. My round as the engineer who didn't get picked to go play with sec is I spend 2 hours just... hanging out? while other people are involved in a cool story I can't play with. 

Now you understand why outcrying the "militarization" etcetera was a stupid thing that was done. We however have the motto "play stupid games, win stupid prizes", people played the game, and are now discovering the prize they won

2 hours ago, N8-Toe said:

Back to the ship example, IRL ships have cooks. its some guys job to make pancakes for people in pirate and contested waters. its some guys job on the Horizon to build forward bases in a possibly dangerous environment, even without a gun.

The point is always the same: They are needed. A cook in a random scenario that doesn't involve cooking, especially if possibly unsafe, isn't

2 hours ago, N8-Toe said:

To stave off accusations of this making the ship militarized or giving people an excuse to be a John sol badass, Cruise ship hotel staff usually have five days at least of training on personal survival, first aid, fire suppression, and similar skills. it wouldn't be much to say the company trains people the basics of "Don't wander off into the woods alone" "Don't pet strange alien creatures" "Don't get in the space shuttle marked "Free Phoron". 

None of this outweights that it would be throwing yourself in danger without any need nor reason to, which is against self-preservation and OOC-in-IC motivated

[Triogenix]

Right, look. The topic of the Horizon's militarization and anything surrounding that topic, is one that is at current, closed for discussion. The maintainers have a position they've made clear, and me and kermit as loremasters agree with their position on the topic quite clearly, so there's no use going around in circle arguing about it. It may be revisited at a future date, in which case people can say whatever they want if we open a public discussion thread, but this thread isn't a place to air grievances about it. If you don't like the decision, we have a staff complaint forum for a reason.

 

As for my actual thoughts on the suggestion;

I think that there is a lot of crossover between the behind the scenes stuff the lore team does for planning events and arcs, and not only running an odyssey but coming up with a general idea for one. That said, as someone with alot of experience in the former, I feel comfortable saying people commonly underestimate how easy it is to involve every department in what is happening in a round, in my case event rounds. It's actually pretty difficult in most situations, especially when there's a specific story you want to tell ahead of time; and this is for event rounds that are heavily planned out ahead of time, have whole documents written up for them, and an admin who is there specifically to help ensure the event goes smoothly. It's even more difficult for a solo storyteller to do in a single round.

I had a whole section written out about how the unathi events were planned because I was involved in that first as a deputy, then as unathi writer, then as loremaster, but it boiled down to a simple principle. When a story requires a specific thing for the Horizon crew to do/complete/ensure happens whatever synonym you want to use, either for the story to progress or simply because that's the type of round the storyteller is running, it is almost impossible to involve every single department. The unathi events were only able to pull this off because a majority of the storyline they were about was one I came up with and wrote Izaku specifically for back in May of 2022, and was eventually planning to do as an article arc, not an event one. The Horizon didn't need to do anything for it to occur, it could happen around them rather then through them. This is a baseline, the extensive custom mapping(thank you rusting, shaky, and all other mappers who helped out) and extensive planning that was done for it allowed it to shine. For storytellers however, they're trying to currently* do something on the fly with little other structure provided besides a map. The easiest thing to tell a story therefore is to give the Horizon's crew a task, something they have to do; but tasks, unless they are insanely large or there's multiple of them tailored for every department, cannot possibly encompass the entire crew and all departments. It is unreasonable to think that it would.

I think bear's suggestion is the only reasonable one with this in mind, in terms of what we can currently do;

On 19/12/2024 at 17:29, Bear said:

The start of an Odessey round should indeed be open to anyone who wants to go. However. A lot of this is dependent on the story teller and the theme that is being set for the round. If we are going to blank check away teams then we need to check the Story teller's escalation at round start to ensure those who have no real business going aren't barred by things like logic, or check the storyteller's ability to have existential threats in general and reduce their impact. The latter is worse, in my opinion as dramatic risks and so on can make for good rounds. So the former is likely the best route to have people start off "slow" so anyone who wants to get involved can get down there before things pop off.

I think going forward however, there's a couple things.

Firstly the creation of odyssey's that are part of a larger story. The Lore Team will start looking into ways to have larger ongoing stories taking place that odyssey's can be built around, somewhat similar to what we did in KOTW where the Aurora had the whole battle for biesel happening around it and nearly all the antag gimmicks reflected that wider story. There's a few obvious issues with this immediately, but I'm not getting into them here.

Secondly, given that it's going to be basically impossible to involve all the Horizon's Departments and crew in every odyssey, create a ton of different odyssey's that cater to different departments. It's not a perfect solution, but it'll balance it out a bit more. Re-use assets where-ever possible, like with Stev's nuclear missle silo/bunker thing, have the potential for the odyssey to be the horizon crew just repairing it, or restocking it before a new crew comes and takes it over, or helping out the people crewing it. Tons of different possibilities.

Third, potentially make our future event arcs significantly longer with fewer 'planned' big events but have dev work during development go towards making tons of different potential canon and non-canon odysseys during that arc. I will discuss this with matt and arrow, but need to preface this by also saying this probably won't be in effect for the next arc, and the one after that even if we decide to do it, for reasons I can't disclose here.

Lastly, and this one may be a bit controversial. Allow Odyssey's to come to the Horizon. Having them only be away sites will always be limiting, and I don't see a reason for them not to sometimes still be ship-centric. One of the best things about the Horizon is that we change regions often, and the best way to have consistent odyssey's would be to have some which don't require region specific maps or similar, but can happen anywhere the ship is and only need like, a shuttle mapped in. If the maintainers already said no to that and I just missed it, ignore me, and apologies.

 

*to the best of my knowledge

Edited December 21 by Triogenix

[FlamingLily]

16 hours ago, Mr.Popper said:

there is usually no one to roleplay with in Odyssey when you're segregated from most of the crew.

This is something that I think is very important to address, when you're left behind on an Odyssey, it's not just "i don't get to interact with the gimmick" it's "I literally can't do anything this round because even if I weren't interacting with the gimmick the vast majority of my RP opportunities have all gone down to the gimmick and there are like 3 people aboard right now"

I have nothing more really to add to this except yes please do more horizon-centric odysseys.

[Skull132]

On 18/12/2024 at 01:45, Fyni said:

instead of having antagonists hogged by security like is often the case with merc or raiders etc.

Unironically. Remove or heavily restrict the number of bodies present in the security department. This is not a problem unique to the Odyssey. This is a problem unique to the security department.

[ASmallCuteCat]

On 21/12/2024 at 05:34, FlamingLily said:

This is something that I think is very important to address, when you're left behind on an Odyssey, it's not just "i don't get to interact with the gimmick" it's "I literally can't do anything this round because even if I weren't interacting with the gimmick the vast majority of my RP opportunities have all gone down to the gimmick and there are like 3 people aboard right now"

+1 to all this. Being left behind on an Odyssey doesn't just mean that you don't get to participate, it means that the only information you have is bits and pieces dropped over comm frequences, and rumors. Often leads to going "whoa, what? what's going on? what's happening?" and having to play the confused, out-of-the-loop guy for 2 to 3 hours is not exactly what I'd call engaging or enjoyable.

There seems to be a bit of a hitch in communication in this thread - it could be my less than stellar ability to read, but I feel like some of the posts are addressing totally different topics.

Again, I don't think anyone is pushing for "the storyteller MUST provide service and ops something to do" or "command MUST send service/ops members down"

If my reading comprehension is correct, the initial topic posed was that Command shouldn't go "No, you're not security or med, you can't participate" at the initial departure, along with the Storyteller and Actors making it feasible to send non-combatants down at the start of the odyssey (as in, it shouldn't be an outright warzone at the start of things and the story should escalate its threat)

Players should be allowed to participate if they desire to participate. Even if their characters wind up being chivvied back onto the Intrepid and sent back to the Horizon as soon as the grem fiesta is discovered in the basement. They need something to talk about, something to bond over or argue on, and if they're barred from the odyssey to begin with, they've got absolutely nothing in that regard.

Edited December 22 by ASmallCuteCat
i forgot an entire paragraph somehow

[Fyni]

9 hours ago, Skull132 said:

Unironically. Remove or heavily restrict the number of bodies present in the security department. This is not a problem unique to the Odyssey. This is a problem unique to the security department.

Not at all. Security has the same number of slots as Engineer and Medical. It just so happens to get filled more often due to them having more interaction with antagonists and thus more likely to have out of the ordinary rounds.

Also I'd like to clarify my pro "add SoP for Ody" idea: I'm not advocating for hard and fast rules, nor am I advocating paragraphs of text. I'm literally saying add a line similiar to the follow:

"During away missions, provisions must be made for crew comfort, such as on site service and safe resting zones, except in the most dangerous of circumstances"

[Sniblet]

You can really tell who in this thread has never mained service.

Aurorastation 13 is a fictional setting. We can have our cake and eat it too, by emoting eating a cake, emoting it reconstituting itself in front of us for literally no reason, and then emoting having the cake.

Everyone on Horizon is already living in deep space and being carried along through the Badlands and Uoeoea-Esa with the shields and thrusters and power down by default and constantly, constantly dealing with greimorians and blobs and allegedly combat drones, somewhere. There is a level of acceptable risk that random bar staff are tolerating already. Going on an Odyssey just means pushing that acceptable risk. No one thinks the bar shotgun should get the DOOM treatment, but a bartender should be authorized to hang around the landing site and hand out miserable visibly writhing cocktails if they please. By some, this is called fun.

 

“What business do you have down here? There could be danger!”

Catering, motherfucker. I’m doing the job on my contract, how about you?

”We have MREs”

Shut up.

”I don’t care if it’s dirty down here so go back up and mop the pristine floors of the echoing, empty halls of the SCCV Horizon for 2 and a half hours”

No.

I truly, truly do not care if it seems a bit questionable to drag the cook along on an exploratory mission. Maybe it is! Maybe you’re right. Anyway, if he’s volunteering, bring him. If you find this unimmersive, I’m sure you can overcome that. I’m doing fine here.

If it’s Fortnite: Battle Royale down there, yeah fine make him stay up. But as long as nobody’s ever asked to evacuate or shelter in place on Code Yellow, nor even the exceptional and relatively highly dangerous - no, I’m serious - Code Blue, then a Code Blue situation should be permissive to everybody.

Edited December 23 by Sniblet

[Bear]

11 hours ago, Fyni said:

Also I'd like to clarify my pro "add SoP for Ody" idea: I'm not advocating for hard and fast rules, nor am I advocating paragraphs of text. I'm literally saying add a line similiar to the follow:

"During away missions, provisions must be made for crew comfort, such as on site service and safe resting zones, except in the most dangerous of circumstances"

Can't create an SoP for a single game mode and I would be wary about creating such an SoP for other existing game modes, or canon encounters. It could be disguised as one by an auto-populated round start Central Command update announcement, however, and I would support that if that route was pursued. That said, staff is talking about another route in the background.

[greenjoe]

It's not exactly a sop for a gamemode however, it's sop for expeditions/away missions, which can happen on other gamemodes then odyssey

[OolongCow]

I personally do not object in any way to Service, or Operations, or Science members volunteering to go along if they can present me with even a flimsy rationale for it. You have all the power in the world to invent a reason to go along. You can offer to run supplies back and forth, or keep a supply of materials and equipment flowing for engineering and medical. You can drag critical kitchen equipment into the Intrepid and use it as a field kitchen for the away team. You can roleplay as going along to give expert opinions on whatever the problem is. It is really, really easy to make up a reason to go on these missions. And people just refuse to. They want to go along, with zero justification from a roleplay perspective, with none of their job's equipment, to spectate instead of participate.

If the chef and bartender come to me, as the captain, and say "Ma'am, we want to help. Can we put the soda dispensers and stove and our supplies on the Intrepid?" I will smile IRL and encourage them to do it every single round. I want them to be involved. But the obligation is on them to invent even a flimsy justification to maintain the suspension of disbelief. I can suggest that, obviously, but they need to take some responsibility too. People are just terrified of being proactive to get involved and it bums me out.

[OolongCow]

On 21/12/2024 at 02:26, Triogenix said:

Lastly, and this one may be a bit controversial. Allow Odyssey's to come to the Horizon. Having them only be away sites will always be limiting, and I don't see a reason for them not to sometimes still be ship-centric.

It's not controversial at all. For one simple fact: literally every single person who has heard "odyssey maps as functional overmap ships" has said "that sounds awesome". Allowing odyssey rounds to happen with the map being a ship that can actually interact with the Horizon would let ship combat actually happen. It would let Odyssey rounds happen aboard the Horizon, or at least closer to it. If we could somehow jury rig an umbilical that allows people to just WALK onto the other ship using cleverly-placed z-level teleporting tiles, then tons of issues for those maps just evaporate as well since you're no longer chained to the shuttles ferrying people.

[geeves]

hello everyone, before i begin, i'd just like to say that we're all here for the same reason, and that is to have fun. there are a lot of opinions and some may clash, but in the end of it all we're all united to play on this silly spaceman game together, as one big community.

now, i've just made a PR that should tentatively resolve the issue at hand without being too heavy-handed, see here: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/20298

and the text itself here:


basically, what this does is add that little paragraph on the bottom prodding all the crew to volunteer, and all the expedition leaders to take them on unless the situation is real bad

i'm going to be looking into solving the late-joining issue, perhaps by allowing people to directly spawn onto the intrepid. still need to figure out how exactly that will be managed

anyhow, that's all i wanted to say, never been one for big forum posts. love you all ❤️

[FlamingLily]

1 hour ago, geeves said:

i'm going to be looking into solving the late-joining issue, perhaps by allowing people to directly spawn onto the intrepid. still need to figure out how exactly that will be managed

I think either this, or dramatically streamlining the process for teleporting down (maybe a more permanent one-way trip system that doesn't need constant supervision and access from command staff?) would go a long way to this. The spawning option I can at least see as having an issue if like, the Intrepid ever somehow gets compromised

 

Consider: A movable machine that acts as a permanent teleportation receiver (a la team fortress 2 teleporters) and doesn't need repeat calibration (but in the same vein, MUST be installed on both ends before it can work)

[N8-Toe]

I see the travel time and interaction around flying the shuttles to be a feature. we have a whole role who's job is piloting. Lets not add equipment that replace them. Also imo teleportation lessens the "distance crossed" feeling

[Sniblet]

A general observation, that I’ve yet to see anyone make about Odyssey as it relates to these discussions, and ought to help guide the way we think:

There are already certain other servers, quite old and very popular (last I looked), where the gameplay of every round centers around an away site. We should never be TGMC or Colonial Marines (god, please), but they have lessons for us. Means of transport, engaging pilot gameplay, exactly how lame it is to stay aboard and how important it is to get people off

the ship.

Edited Wednesday at 18:13 by Sniblet