LforLouise - Biesel/Megacorp Lore Deputy Application

[LforLouiseeee]

Ckey/BYOND Username: LforLouise
Position Being Applied For: Bagel/Megacool Lore Deputy
Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page? Yep
Past Experiences/Knowledge: I have not been in a lore team or relevant-to-lore staff team on aurora or otherwise, and usually just do my own projects.
Examples of Past Work: I would prefer to keep my previous work private - I don't want any random person on this forum looking at it, but, I would be happy to share it with relevant parties, just shoot me a DM.
Additional Comments: hi!!!

1) Answer the following questions concerning the Republic of Biesel:

What are your thoughts on the Republic of Biesel’s current politics, external and internal, and how would you like to see them develop?

I like the present shift human lore is taking to further distance Biesel from Sol, and more closely align themselves with the other Phoron-laden nation (Elyra). This makes sense, further strengthening the two country's monopoly on phoron, with Elyra opting for strong allies against the ever-increasing threat that is Dominia. I would have liked to see this take a more long-term story, considering the two nations *do* have some poor history with eachother.

Many of the planets under the banner of the Republic of Biesel have lagged behind in development and/or lack good pull-factors. Is there a particular planet you would like to help revise and do you have any suggestions in that regard?

Reade. Reade has a lot of potential - being home to a massive blimp city in it's upper atmosphere, and non-descript asteroid moons which could be home to their own populations and semi-unique cultures. The planet is also the republic's military hub (alongside dumas), which would certainly influence how it's seen among the other republic planets. 
There's a lot of stuff that could be done with Reade, too much to list in this, for now.

Is there anything about Biesel's (the planet) lore you really like or really dislike?

I love the segmentation of Mendell City - it shows what can be done when you delve into life in a specific area. Each district has it's own style and pros and cons (both icly and oocly), instead of just being 'Mendell city is a really reach place but also has some really poor people :C'

What is dislike is how short the economy section for Biesel is. It's meant to be among the richest places in the entire spur, and it gets 10 lines. The lines are good - it's an example of short and sweet, but there could certainly be more to it.

2) Concerning the Megacorporations:

Can you tier-list the megacorporations, graded by OOC characteristics (eg. characterisation, writing quality, contribution to the setting, relevance to played characters) with brief reasoning as to why they are graded such. Bonus points if you go the full mile with graphics (you don’t have to, that’s effort).

Hey guys, LforLouise here with another e-e-e-e-e-epic youtube tierlist ranking video. Today in this video we'll be ranking the megacorporations of Aurora lore.
Without further adieu let's get STRAIGHT into it.

So gamers, we'll start with the big, the bold, and the beautiful Nanotrasen. We're gonna throw these straight into A-Tier. Not the best, but they're pretty good. They're *incredibly* relevant to the setting and perhaps tied with Hephaestus for how much they can impact the setting with things like lore arcs. It's well written, especially when it's forced to be adapted from decades old classic SS13 'Haha Nanotrasen controls the UNIIIIVERRRRSE' lore from other servers.

Speaking of Hephaestus, we'll put them into S-Tier. These bad boys in green aren't as impactful as Nanotrasen, but they're one of the big powerhouses in the spur today. The dichotomy of being a corporation that 'loves its workers', whilst at the same time screwing them over in more ways than Idris is an interesting one, it's well done and a pretty good corporation overall.

From a corporation that treats it's workers poorly, to one that treats them rather well, we're gonna move on to Zeng-Hu.
They're professionals to an almost cult-like level, awarding long-term employees with implants and cybernetics that assist them in their profession whilst also staking a literal claim to their own bodies. Similarly to the PMCG (which we'll touch on later), Zeng-Hu's multi-component structure offers a unique view on the setting, even if it is limited in the fact that it's mostly just three medical and research corporations. With all this in mind, we'll be giving Zeng-Hu an A-Tier alongside Nanotrasen.

Moving down the list to our first of three B-Tier corporations, we'll start with the PMCG. It's biggest upside is also it's biggest flaw - in that there's a subcontractor for everyone, which means the PMCG itself has no real flavour if it's not directly related to it's subcontractors.
There are some stunning PMCs, like Nexus, N4NL, Phalanx, and at a push Index & Chevauchee, but even N4NL suffers from the fact that it's *incredibly* gimmicky - there is no reason an N4NL contractor should be in our current setting other than being an investigator with a very underutilised gimmick. Overall, the PMCG is an okay average. There's a lot that could be changed, and a lot that could be added.

Now we're onto lockheed martin- sorry, I mean Zavodskoi. Our stereotypically evil military industrial corporation, previously our stereotypically evil genetic engineering corporation. It has it's place in our lore, and it plays it well enough. There's not really too much else to say, really. We'll slap it into B-Tier, alongside PMCG and...

...Idris! Our final B-Lister, Idris earns a soft spot in my heart for being the only corporation that you can play an actual corporate security officer without being a ringspire war criminal or a zavodskoi killsquaddie. psuedo-Indentured servitude is also very based. In lore. Not IRL. Slavery sucks. Idris also has the thing I like about Hephaestus (I just think hephaestus executes it better) with the incredibly jolly public-facing tourism industry, versus the previously mentioned psuedo-Indentured servitude imposed on it's poorest workers and IPCs.

Let's get hauling along with Orion Express. I'm not a fan of this company. I believe it serves 2 purposes in our setting:
1. To have another company in operations so it isn't just Hephaestus.
2. To have a company where players who want their characters to be criminals to go to.
That's it. The other megacorps, being as big as they are, have no real *need* to have formed Orion Express to handle their logistics. Hephaestus could *easily* handle shipping their own products with how massive they are, Idris still mostly rely on their own transports, leaving Orion in this state where it is literally just amazon but in space. For that, Orion earns a C-Tier. It's not the worst, and it still serves some purpose, but there's easily better alternatives. It's still well written, don't get me wrong, I just don't see a need for it to be there in the first place.

And finally... Einstein Engines. In my 2 or 3 years on this server, I think I've read their lore a grand total of twice. It's alright, I guess, but, it's dragged down by the fact that it serves literally no purpose in the current setting. It has *no* presence in the lives of the characters, it has *barely any* presence in our current articles. It is *rarely, if ever* mentioned in-game. I would argue that, in the current state of affairs, you could play this server for a year without even realising it exists. For this, it earns the first, and only, D-Tier.

Thanks for watching guys and remember to give this post a LIKE and a +1 if you want to see future content!



3) Write a small Google Docs proposal for any piece of Republic of Biesel or Megacorporate lore you are interested in for the current setting. The proposal can be a wiki lore addition or a stand-alone forum article, but must be >=2 okay-length paragraphs.

Oye, Beltalowda! Come read this document on racing tiny spaceships inbetween asteroids in Tau Ceti's asteroid belt!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15xjHjqZPzrVnIIhi_sNHXmno09aJKcFH7G-GwWCX584/edit?usp=sharing

4) Finally, what’s a piece of sci-fi you are most inspired by in your writings, be it a media franchise, novel, game or something else?

The Expanse is probably one of my favourite Sci-Fi things, though it has its flaws.
For what it's worth, Aurora lore is also pretty good, arguably the only well-written lore in SS13 (from what I've seen... I'm sure theres a lot.)
40K is *very* expansive, but *very* contradictory, though it's still pretty cool.
Star Wars is/was cool but its super arcadey like 40K. I definitely prefer hard sci-fi stuff.
I guess I don't read TOO much sci-fi stuff. Still cool though.

 

[GeneralCamo]

I'd like to ask more on your thoughts on NanoTrasen as a whole, especially what you see as "well-written" and why they're A-tier on your list. You're correct that they're the most relevant corp in our setting, but to some this isn't the best thing. I wouldn't mind having more details on your opinions.

[Nagito Komaeda]

How do you feel the 'Hephaestus vs. Zavodskoi' arc landed? I personally believe the premise was good (e.g. two big megacorps having some actual, tangible beef with each other) but the stakes for crew themselves were too low to be involved with the matter (from my perspective). Do you believe the Hephaestus vs. Zavodskoi idea should be improved on pre-NBT2? And do you believe other megacorps should have a similar, deep-rooted rivalry with actual in-lore justification? If so, what corporations would you pit 'against' each other?

[LforLouiseeee]

6 hours ago, GeneralCamo said:

I'd like to ask more on your thoughts on NanoTrasen as a whole, especially what you see as "well-written" and why they're A-tier on your list. You're correct that they're the most relevant corp in our setting, but to some this isn't the best thing. I wouldn't mind having more details on your opinions.

I suppose this comment is more coming from the fact I used to play in servers with lore amounting to 'These guys OWN you. Cry about it'. Sure, some people may not consider NT well written, and other may not like NT, but considering the fact Nanotrasen is the default player corporation in most SS13 servers, it's a huge, enormous step up from what they have to what we have. This does lead into their major downside though - NT is just... simple. It's boring in a way - why play for a standard corporation when you could have character hooks such as Zeng-Hu owning your limbs, or stuff like that.

Then, going on to what we have - it's a simple fact that every thing just makes sense. There's a few things that need updating, and there will always be things I don't like about everything - but that's true for everyone and everything, but overall it's pretty good. I think the only thing NT's page could improve on is what it's like to work for them.

 

2 hours ago, Nagito Komaeda said:

How do you feel the 'Hephaestus vs. Zavodskoi' arc landed? I personally believe the premise was good (e.g. two big megacorps having some actual, tangible beef with each other) but the stakes for crew themselves were too low to be involved with the matter (from my perspective). Do you believe the Hephaestus vs. Zavodskoi idea should be improved on pre-NBT2? And do you believe other megacorps should have a similar, deep-rooted rivalry with actual in-lore justification? If so, what corporations would you pit 'against' each other?

I agree with the points you make - The premise was great, and if it was executed in a way that mattered more to the player, the arc would have been stunning.
I certainly think there's a place to improve upon the intra-SCC rivalrys, and, as I previously noted, push for Einstein being more prominent in the lives of our characters. 
As for pitting corporations against eachother, I am unsure - Nanotrasen would likely wish to consolidate it's power in the chainlink by having a cage match of Miranda Trasen vs Aeson (if i am picked this will be canon by 2039 (this is a lie)) or things like that, which would surely spark some more backlash from the other corps. However, what I think is an untapped mine are the corporations of other states, such as the Elyran 'Elco' - Elyra's state monopoly over Phoron, and with Biesel & Elyra starting to become closer partners, it's only natural that these two phoron giants would start to clash, or perhaps the opposite...?

[GeneralCamo]

15 hours ago, LforLouiseeee said:

it's a huge, enormous step up from what they have to what we have. This does lead into their major downside though - NT is just... simple. It's boring in a way - why play for a standard corporation when you could have character hooks such as Zeng-Hu owning your limbs, or stuff like that.

I suppose I am a bit confused as to why you rank something that you admit is boring, so highly. While ranking our gameplay compared to other servers is one thing (since we're all sprite-based RPGs at the end of the day), doing the same with lore is questionable. Aurora is one of the few HRP servers out there, and very few of the others have NT at all. This feels like comparing an apple to oranges, and the apple isn't very delicious.

[LforLouiseeee]

1 hour ago, GeneralCamo said:

I suppose I am a bit confused as to why you rank something that you admit is boring, so highly. While ranking our gameplay compared to other servers is one thing (since we're all sprite-based RPGs at the end of the day), doing the same with lore is questionable. Aurora is one of the few HRP servers out there, and very few of the others have NT at all. This feels like comparing an apple to oranges, and the apple isn't very delicious.

Its an example of the perfect average. It has flaws like everything else does - this flaw is just that its just not the other corps, so people don't want to play it. It's generic and it does the role well. Yeah, this is somewhat contradictory but I mean, that's it really.