Issues with Vaurca and Possible Solutions/Suggestions

[MFalco]

INCOMING WALL OF TEXT

So, I and a couple other people have noticed a bunch of issues concerning Vaurca.

Conspiir’s post detailing the medical side of Vaurca - https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9113

Tmmytbbt on enforcing treatment laws - https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?p=85164#p85164

The majority of responses to concerns that are brought up consist of “they are roaches, who cares?”, “just mooch from other departments”, and “I don’t want to learn, I’m lazy”. This is in both IC and OOC. I am making this thread to layout some of these issues, and some suggestions to maybe make playing/dealing with Vaurca not such a pain in the ass. I’m still new to SS13 and RPing in general, but I want to take this seriously. People more knowledgeable and skillful than me are talking about the same thing.

K’ois Being Constantly Destroyed in the Garden

Every round I play Zed (my Vaurca medical resident), I start the shift by going to the garden, buying the 1/2 k’ois seeds (depending on how much money I spawn with), planting it, making an announcement over comms to not touch it, go to medical, set things up, and then return to the garden. Almost every time, the k’ois has been destroyed. I ask who took it, and get no response (sidenote: people still don’t listen when they are asked to turn up their damn suit sensors 100 times, even by the automated ship wide announcements. It’s to help you, people!). Sometimes there is a priority announcement that people shouldn’t be doing this, and something about it being illegal and you will get in trouble if it continues. Once that happens, it is immediately forgotten about and never mentioned again. From an OOC perspective, it’s very frustrating because not only do I have to worry about helping to keep Medical running, I have to now figure out how I’m going to even survive the shift without suffocating to death. And this is a problem for every Vaurca player. Nothing ever gets resolved with this, and we are forced to either pray there is a chemist who will ACTUALLY make phoron, or hopefully find someone nice enough to buy a k’ois bar or 2. I get that there is an IC reason behind all the Vaurca hate, but it’s a little ridiculous when members of the crew (which the Vaurca are a part of, even though they are forced to be there), seem to completely disregard their issues most of the time. They are intentionally crippling their ability to function. The Vaurca are there to work, but if the station is actively preventing them from doing that, why are they even there?

Possible Solutions/Suggestions

- Have another garden area specifically for k’ois on the main level. It can be somewhere near the kitchen (so chefs can make dishes with them and have something different to do), or in Medical. The sublevel has a lot of rooms that I’ve never even see anyone go into.

- Have emergency phoron pills on hand in case there is no chemist or they just refuse to make any

- Have there be some sort of phoron damage to your hands if you attempt to harvest the k’ois without special gloves if you are a non-Vaurca

- Have a new medkit created specifically for Vaurca (Phoron pills, k’ois paste/bars, dylovene, kelotane)

- Have Vaurca spawn with seeds/bars. They have very little money and are lucky if they can afford multiple seeds. They can’t even afford the bars, but some idiot can and then decide to eat it which not only wastes it, it now costs medical resources to fix. I was recently told they can spawn with a lunchbox that has k’ois, but it is currently bugged. I didn’t know about it, so I can’t confirm or deny.

Using Flashes on Vaurca

This is a no-no. They will go blind if you constantly flash them. Their eyes already hurt being in a brightly lit station. Security should know this. It should be considered assault or neglect of duty at the very least, but there seems to be little to no repercussions. They even have Vaurca IN Security. The Vaurca have been around for almost 2 years lore-wise, and still people have no idea how to handle them. You would think that a huge company would teach their employees the basics of the anatomy and treatment of their fellow crew members. People’s personal opinions shouldn’t matter when it comes to this. NT forces the Vaurca to work in order to remain there, yet the station seems to go out of it’s way to make it extremely difficult for them to function at a basic level. The lack of knowledge and lack of desire to gain that knowledge seems a little silly.

Possible Solutions/Suggestions

-STOP NEEDLESSLY FLASHING THE POOR BUG PERSON

Cloning/Treating Vaurca

This has been brought up in Conspiir’s topic on Vaurca medical treatment. It also ties into the fact that crew members should make the effort to learn the basics concerning members of their own crew. Doctors should know how to treat their patients. The Vaurca being “new” shouldn’t be an excuse anymore. If they don’t know how to do it, they need to learn. It’s no different than having to learn treatment and surgery in general.

If you made it this far, congratulations! You did it! I hope that enough people read this and take it somewhat seriously. Vaurca are a ton of fun to play and they are just an interesting race in general. If anyone else has any suggestions or if you are a fellow bugman and want to point out something I missed, please let me know. Thank you for your time.

[Lohikar]

Please remember that suggestions posts are restricted to one suggestion per post, per board rules.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

The main problem I see with Vaurca is that their survival and continued playability on station depends on the good will of the crew.

Which doesn't exist.

[Conspiir]

Please remember that suggestions posts are restricted to one suggestion per post, per board rules.

 

I'd rather have all the common problems with Vaurca in one place than have three different topics about bugs that people aren't going to look at anyway because 'It's just bugs'.

Since we need a new lore dev once more, and the group of people that actually PLAY Vaurca are about... oh... five... I'd say what's brought up here is all valid. It's what can be done about it now that is really important. A Vaurca medkit. People understanding basic care of an alien species. People taking at least some interest in their existence if only for the OOC reason if "There's a person behind that character that wants to play the game".

[Munks]

You decided to play a race where the big intended drawback is reliance on phoron and the fact that it's going to be difficult to acquire, and that people are going to fuck up handling you in Security and Medbay, but people are supposed to be surprised when this does in fact happen? Your answer to these problems is basically to add in a bunch of IC workarounds so that you won't have to bother with the drawbacks of your race. Instead of asking the Vaurca's drawbacks be pretty much nullified by giving them free phoron, free special hideyhole to make it, give them more special unique vaurca health kits, and whatever your actual idea for the flashing is (make it super duper illegal and antag to flash them i guess) why not just not play it if it's so difficult for you or get gardening access/coordinate to be in the garden/plant them somewhere they won't be stolen? You're right, it is just bugs, so why would Nanotrasen bother putting forth the effort to modify their stations, field entire medical kits dedicated to them, give them free PHORON (which we're here to be researching and sending back to them)? Especially when OOCly the pool of people that even play Vaurca are about five.

[Conspiir]

You decided to play a race where the big intended drawback is reliance on phoron and the fact that it's going to be difficult to acquire, and that people are going to fuck up handling you in Security and Medbay, but people are supposed to be surprised when this does in fact happen? Your answer to these problems is basically to add in a bunch of IC workarounds so that you won't have to bother with the drawbacks of your race. Instead of asking the Vaurca's drawbacks be pretty much nullified by giving them free phoron, free special hideyhole to make it, give them more special unique vaurca health kits, and whatever your actual idea for the flashing is (make it super duper illegal and antag to flash them i guess) why not just not play it if it's so difficult for you or get gardening access/coordinate to be in the garden/plant them somewhere they won't be stolen? You're right, it is just bugs, so why would Nanotrasen bother putting forth the effort to modify their stations, field entire medical kits dedicated to them, give them free PHORON (which we're here to be researching and sending back to them)? Especially when OOCly the pool of people that even play Vaurca are about five.

 

So your point of view is to remove Vaurca from the game? That isn't helpful at all, man. The pool of Vaurca players should be higher, lorewise, since they are free labor. If they are provided K'ois, they work for less than the cost of the K'ois itself. We should be working to make Vaurca more attractive and accessible OOCly. There aren't many that want to deal with trying to breathe and those of us that do must certainly be masochists.

[MFalco]

I was just throwing out ideas. I understand to a point the station crew's inability to help, but as I mentioned before, they've been around almost 2 years. There's no excuse lore wise that nobody has any idea what to do with them. People still don't even know what a k'ois bar is. People destroying k'ois intentionally and refusing to help when one is dying is no different than someone instagibbing someone as an antag. There's no potential for roleplay if the character dies 30 minutes into a round, and people get frustrated with it all the time. But because only a handful of people play a specific race, it's less important. Real people are playing these characters. They aren't some random NPC you can just mess with because it doesn't matter.

Nanotrasen didn't give everyone a 2 page pamphlet with bullet points about the new species that is now on their station? NT has them there essentially to pay rent. They don't even get paid. Why would they ask for workers knowing that the other employees will actively go out of their way to make it near impossible for them to actually do the work they were assigned? If a cyborg or IPC breaks, they go to robotics to get fixed and have no issue. If someone gets sick, they go to medbay to be treated. A Vaurca gets injured or is literally suffocating in front of someone, the common reaction is "lol stupid bug, fuck you", which is understandable given the lore reasons behind it. But this mentality bleeds into OOC as well. I only suggest these things because something needs to change to make the Vaurca actually playable. I mention the medkits because the medical staff is for the most part incompetent where Vaurca are concerned, and there should be something, at least temporarily, to help them understand. Real doctors continue to learn things all the time, but fake space doctors don't need to? And I and the other players who play them play them because we like them. Their lore is interesting and I like their mechanics. What I dislike is the adamant refusal in both IC and OOC to pay any attention to it. I will keep playing them until they get removed. And I will bring these issues up if they continue to exist.