Feedback Thread: Creature Scanning System

[Nanako]

Since the content submisssion thread is getting sidetracked, i'm splitting it in two, this thread is for feedback and discussion of the system.

The creature scanner (name subject to change) is a new mechanic i'm adding to xenobiology. It will initially be for flavour and roleplay, but its also a preliminary step in a larger and much-desired system i'm working on.

The basic idea is, the scanner works like a destructive analyser, but for biological lifeforms. You insert specimens and decompile their corpses in order to learn more about them. This learning comes in the form of a bestiary, which will unlock various useful and helpful information about the creature in threee parts. The bestiary needs a lot of content, and i have a sort of creative writing contest for submitting your own entries here: http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7349

I will be in close consultation with the lore writing team about submitted content. Communication between departments is important, the aurora dev team doesn't work in a vacuum

in order to learn all the possible information about a creature, you must sacrifice three specimens of its species, to the machine. And at least one of those three, must be put in while its still alive. I plan to add a tool for live capture to aid in this process. Each different colour of slimes will count as a seperate creature for this purpose, to farther encourage breeding a wide rainbow of slime hues, and give some incentive to do anything besides just farming one colour.

The gameplay objectives here are several - it gives xenobio more to do, and more interactions with creatures that aren't simply slimes. It also gives the crew a bit more purpose - people can drag dead carp, spiders, bears, etc down there for research, making creatures a bit more valueable. Capturing a hostile creature alive will be somewhat dangerous and encourages a bit of risk and reward. In future, it will also tie into a larger meta-research system, acting as

Feedback about the system, its objectives and content, are welcome

[Bedshaped]

remove mice

[Arrow768]

We had this discussion just a day ago in the staff discord.

As far as I am aware Jackboot did not want to provide a specific description of everything we have. As much of the fun comes from experimenting and finding it out on your own.

Giving it a name, Finding out what it does, ... much of that just goes away when we explain everything for the players and tell them what is what and how it works.

[Nanako]

We had this discussion just a day ago in the staff discord.

As far as I am aware Jackboot did not want to provide a specific description of everything we have. As much of the fun comes from experimenting and finding it out on your own.

Giving it a name, Finding out what it does, ... much of that just goes away when we explain everything for the players and tell them what is what and how it works.

 

this isn't going to be a global, easily accessible thing. its a xenobio database that you have to unlock during a round. that aspect of fun isnt going to be compromised

[Arrow768]

Again. Alot of fun comes from experimenting with stuff and discussing with fellow scientists what it is, how it works then naming it and maybe writing a report on it.

Exactly what you want to dictate to the players.

[Nanako]

Again. Alot of fun comes from experimenting with stuff and discussing with fellow scientists what it is, how it works then naming it and maybe writing a report on it.

Exactly what you want to dictate to the players.

I'm not dictating anything, this thread exists for the players to publish that information and post their own thoughts on various creatures.

The information is unlocked as a reward for gathering and experimenting on specimens. this is not spoonfeeding. Please don't turn my thread into a big argument

[Tenenza]

I dislike this idea.

Making shit up is what's fun about research.

Setting anything in stone, no matter how hidden the stone is, reduces the roleplay of research.

One researcher might say "Well, the 'Slimes' as you call them, are in fact multifractuated subdimensional lifeforms that partially exist in the gradient along the 12th DBYV alignment field adjacent to bluespace. The part that overlaps with our dimensional space, the non-euclidian hyper-crystalline core, is able to refract and absorb unique wavelength of radiation, both electromagnetic and plasmatic. In doing so, by using phoron as a subdimensional-breaching catalyst, it is possible to reverse the higher topography of the core and sublimate material and energy via the horizontal gradient of bluespace."

Another round, someone might say "Well, you know, the Slimes are actually a psuedopsionic protoplasmic hiveform, using a inverse spiral law cellular fold to compress a quantumly uncertain form of strange matter into it's central 'brain' cluster. This strange matter, which both enables it's entirely alien and powerful mind to have both extremely powerful and limited psionics, can be dematricied via a plasmic reaction, which, depending on the psionic inclination of the slime at time of death, results in instantaneous quantum reincarnation. This effect can be molded, and controlled by proper breeding and care, and so long as it has sufficient electromagnetic energy to power the inverse spiral core's supersoloid reaction, everything is completely safe."

If you set in stone what the hell a slime actually is, you kill one or both of those, and with them, all the varied roleplay that could come from them.

I want to see researchers talk about if it's ethical to breed and cull populations of semi-sentient psionics.

I want to also see researchers talk about if it's a good idea to teleport slimes through bluespace, or if that's why the slime corpses seem to always end up back on station somehow.

I want to hear the crackpot theories about if golems are organic, sentient, and such and such and such.

Don't even get me started on Xenomorphs and the gold slime creatures.

This is not a good idea, and stripes away creativity and technobabble bullshit.

[Nanako]

Setting anything in stone, no matter how hidden the stone is, reduces the roleplay of research.

 

I disagree, it increases it.

Right now you drag something to sceiince? Xenobio has no idea what it is, can't learn about it. They either go 'lol dunno boss' or make up something that has no relevance to science, Making things up is not science. It's a field of discovery and learning, even simulated science should be about learning and discovering things. By definition, you are learning nothing if you are writing the book personally.

Having things 'set in stone' as you call it, is just lore for everyone else. We know that tajarans live on a cold world, we know that unathi are lizards from a post apocalyptic desert planet, and we know about a variety of wildlife on their homeworld: http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6435&p=63984p63988

Do you think it would be better if they were just 'scary lizardpeople from somewhere?'

No, thats what every other server has. Things have little or no lore, so you're free to make up anything you want about them. What actually happens in practise is that people don't do that, they don't care about lore. They're just 'lol lizardpeople'

The same applies here. Look at the space carp or the spiders, or the slimes. People have long since stopped caring about what they are, they're just things to breed or kill.

With this project i'm inviting people to write their own lore for things. I'm ENCOURAGING that creativity you seem to think i'm reducing

 

If you set in stone what the hell a slime actually is, you kill one or both of those, and with them, all the varied roleplay that could come from them.

 

What slimes are has been set in stone for a while, they're semi-biological bluespace entities. I've already reinforced this with devouring code that puts them in a category where they can't be eaten by organic-eating things

Creating lore for your universe does not reduce roleplay, it increases it, massively. Thats the reason we HAVE lore writing staff in the fiirst place. If mystery and vagueness were so important, we could just fire them all. Specific and detailed lore about various creatures, places and concepts,is what makes aurora unique

Where was this moral panic when people were writting the above unathi animals thread? The plain tyrant is ingame, and it has a defined biology, habitat, breeding cycle and personality. Nobody complained about that.

There's more roleplay to be had in a world where things can actually be discovered and learned about. And you can tell your coworkers and underlings about your findings

I've created this thread as a place to encourage creativity. This thread is literally a creative writing contest, and you guys are trying to shut it down in the name of 'protecting creativity' ? look at what you're doing for a moment, please.

I've paged all the lore staff to this thread - the actual people responsible for writing our lore-, and several of them have expressed an interest in contributing. This isn't some thing i'm doing to steal away lore, it's a lore related project that i'm working on WITH the people we trust to write our lore.

And lastly, i never said anything was being set in stone. Lore about a creature can change as surely as any other, these things are often revised and retconned over time

[Tenenza]

Research on Aurora isn't about discovery, science, or whatnot.

It's about roleplay, it's always been about roleplay. We're a heavy roleplay server. Everything comes back to roleplay.

The reason no one gives a shit about the unathi creatures is because no one cares to study unathi creatures. They have near-zero effect on the round or the roleplay that happens there, like so much of the lore.

If you start touching the creatures that actually show up in the round, then you're taking control of the story out of the hands of the players and into whoever the hell wrote this lore, which, by the way, sounds utterly banal in design. You're putting the whole thing into a document design box that does nothing to inspire variant writing.

It doesn't matter if the lore can be retconned or whatnot, it shouldn't exist in the first place. The more you structure things up, the more and more rounds will turn out exactly the same." Oh, you figured out how slimes are bluespace creatures? Wow, that's exactly what the fuck the last eighty scientists have come up with too. I'd blame you for being unoriginal but I can't because apparently that's the mandated answer."

Don't treat the players like some sort of sheep that need to be guided with nice words and descriptions in roleplay. People should be able to have the power to influence the round in surprising, unexpected ways.

Plus, what the hell are you going to do once someone has caught them all? Do you expect them to just pretend to forget it all? Like *everyone* does with the protolathe and all the wonderful things it can build, plus the optimized research order? And don't think things like "oh, but they'll never get them all" or "Well, sure, that's just good roleplay" are defenses. You're replacing an area of pure creativity and roleplay with a system with no creativity for anyone but the writers and banal, repetitive roleplay.

If your objective is to make xenobiologists never leave their lab or interact with the round, ever, then I'd say you've found the perfect solution. Now, even their roleplay will be repetitive and unrewarding, like so much of their gameplay.

[LordFowl]

Perhaps an alternative would be to allow players ICly to submit their findings into this database, so that their discoveries become timeless and last across rounds. I am not sure how it woukd shoehorn into your metaresearch meta-idea, but based off of the proposed premise it seems a fair solution.

[K0NFL1QT]

The fact that there are no answers is what annoys me about research. You can make up something ludicrous and there's no way to confirm or deny someones theories as truth or bullshit. One theory is as valid as the next, lacking in objective truth of which the discovery is the basis for actual science. Science isn't about infinite unsolved mysteries that change every day depending on what the scientist believes, it's about crystallizing knowledge towards objective truth from a point of ignorance, with countless theories along the way either proven or disproven.

I support giving the miscellaneous creatures solid lore.

[LordFowl]

Science is about infinite mysteries. The universe is infinite, and currently there is no projected means to discover all of it. Unfortunately, our code is not unlimited, and so we must make do.

[Nanako]

there's plenty of scope for mystery in many interactions and well-designed mechanics, that doesn't mean everything has to be nebulous.

Anyone can make a mystery, you just have to do nothing. Making actual content to discover is more interesting, and would provide a semi-tangible reward to encourage this mechanic, and thus to research deeper into the game

[Blingx3]

I approve of this, xenobioligy has so much potential wasted on bad xenobioligsts and gold slime abuseres.

I'd be happy to share ideas and thoughts about this. If this would be the place ?

[Pyrociraptor]

Maybe instead of a whole bestiary already made where scanning would just tell you shit, You could maybe do something similar in virology where:

Only certain trait of the specie is shown (Is it aggressive ? How much health/resistance it got?), But the Xenobiologist (IF he's alive and not being mauled by slimes) could for exemple Name it like he feels like (Brace for "Really big Unathi" or "Cute ball of destruction") and describe/explain it himself.

(Maybe even do something similar for books, where all Published datas would go in some kinds of database, where one xenobio could see the theories/speculations of another xenobio on one specie, seeing how he named it/described it.)

[SomeoneOutTher3]

Is the thread for suggestions only for lore writers/coders or can anyone post?

[Nanako]

IC submissions are good, and i heartily welcome that. But not ingame, that would require coding up a complicated new system, and i'm just getting to grips with databases for now.

We have RP forums here. As an RD, why not gather reports from your staff and post them in such a plce, or in the submissions thread. SAMPLe used to do a lot of that kind of thing!

The submission thread is open to anyone, though submissions will go through staff approval

[Zundy]

I'm totally for this. I've made it clear in previous threads that I'm for perminance in science as well as continuous discovery. You don't need to make up new shit for the same stuff everyday and besides, this still leaves room for you to make up your own inventions/discoveries. I've got a scientist researching the potential for humans to influence blue space via bespoke implants and another scientist trying to develop Unathi brand augs'.

This wouldn't stifle roleplay I'm my opinion.

[MoondancerPony]

I feel like the previous suggestion about in-game submissions would be good. Maybe as some sort of end-of-round form or just general form that a xenobiologist can fill out? Or maybe right click on the scanner or something, click something like 'add observations for scanned specimen', select the specimen you want, and then type in your observations.

It'd probably need some pruning, but I imagine that it'd be no different than the library database, and probably better. It'd give xenobiologists something to do, an actual relevance and sense of persistence, while still keeping this idea alive.

EDIT: Haha, nevermind, I see someone came up with the exact same idea before...