[RP] Cult... Monolith? Event AAR/Feedback

[VARKA & Selyn]

Okay, I was trying to take a nap just now but couldn't, so instead a collection of thoughts on the event earlier today/overnight;

From the top, we start a new round. After some pondering, I decide to join just after roundstart with a newish character, a Security-focused one who's basically there to be a more chill/less aggressive Overseer Of All Things Redshirt-y. It starts out quiet, with a cadet (Casus Vettius) coming in for training. He gets orientation and chills for a bit, then I send him on patrol so he's not staring at cameras forever. There's a couple of minor incidents like solar grubs, a (literal) troll almost starting a barfight with the CRO over weird misunderstandings, and a bored miner sparking a chase over a fake weapon and/or trying to hit on the cadet. In the spirit of Not Being A Shitcurity Asshole, I go easy on the miner because I don't want to make a bad first impression and it honestly wasn't worth causing a fuss over. We also have some lazy engineers who show up, set the supermatter (badly) and then fuck off again, requiring cyborg assistance to subdue an engine fire before we all exploded. Props to most of security/command for not causing a panic with this one at least.

Now, shortly after the second claimed weapon incident (which as far as I can tell was false, and I correctly treated as such) we hear a deep rumble and receive an exciting centcomm update as the event kicks off; a weird Thing has landed near the Solars and we need to investigate because it might be hostile. This is exactly where everything starts to go pearshaped. We're running everywhere, Science jumps at the opportunity to print guns.

Firstly, our arachnoid Engineering cyborg Fang disregards the CLASSIFIED part of the message and near immediately causes a fuss whilst I'm in the middle of deciding what to do talking to the CMO Sophie Einstantz and the Security robot Australis. Fang gets in shit, Australis goes to bail him out, and Security runs around trying to figure out how to arm ourselves when the 'borgs reveal the anomaly is pulsing EMP every couple of minutes, making lasers and high-tech gear a no-go. I'm quietly glad that, again, I made the right choice to grab a voidsuit and not escalate straight to a hardsuit because getting EMP'd in that would not have been fun (or, at least, that was my IC logic at the time; OOC I didn't want to escalate that hard as I suspected it would be overkill).

Anyways, we head out and regroup, as I find that a Scientist - a Biomechanical Engineer at that - Ray Greyson, has run off to investigate himself. This was incredibly reckless and I really have to question the judgement of Ray in this instance, considering the place was swarming with hostile creatures. Fortunately, he did at least have the foresight to take some useful tools, so with his assistance, and that of sometimes-Warden-but-currently-Quartermaster Brock Stall, we fight through the interior of the weird stone mansion to locate the source of the problem and move it outside so that the anomalist (Amaranta Ignacia) can secure and contain it. The main threat has been contained, and nobody was badly injured!

With the EMP threat neutralized, we return to HQ, patch up, and escalate arms. At this point the CRO (Anna Kronys) almost orders us a Durand(!!!) going on about how we need a quote "tank or DPS unit" unquote (what) which would have been hideous amounts of overkill for the remaining resistance, but thankfully that order was belayed. Given the remaining resistance inside, the Durand would have slowed things down far too much.

Still, we mount up and do an interior + perimeter sweep of the site just to be safe, killing several more stragglers hiding in various places... just in time for the five hour tram to arrive. Here's where things get ugly. As we're coming in, Amaranta quietly warns us that they're going to test an anomaly in one minute; an anomaly that spikes BERZERK+EMP. Half of the away team is cycling public EVA and the other half is outside. This explodes one member of Security entirely (Electrum, a Protean) and traps the other two members of the away team in the airlock for a short time, whilst Fang and I have to go around and mildly cheese the mining conveyors to get back inside quickly.

In hindsight, I missed this message and if I hadn't I would have asked her to delay a few more minutes, which probably would've avoided a fair amount of end-round yelling IC (which I also should have kept a closer hold on). Nobody actually seems too mad OOC and nobody super actually died, so a big ol' No Big Deal as far as I'm concerned.

So in summary; pretty good, but it would've been nice to kick off a bit earlier. This event was sadly a little dominated by Security getting to wave our big guns and shiny toys around, and I would've loved to get the Science team in to take a look at the site for more RP opportunities. I also would've loved to call in a Central team (not ERT, but something similar) to secure the cult artefact for immediate transit offsite, again for RP opportunities.

Finally, thoughts on the actors primarily involved as I encountered them;

SecCom Sokolov - hey, that's me, exasperated security commander. I hope I did good here, but it was my second round on the character and the first as HoS in a very very long time. Again in hindsight I should have been a little more cautious and attentive, but I was twitchy and a touch tired.
Cyborg Fang, where do I start with you? You started by fucking with Medical's Cryo setup as an Engineering Borg. Not cool And whilst you did help with clearing the site in the second sweep, you also went charging into the thing in the first place and to my knowledge let the situation escalate before Security could try to get a handle on it. Less yelling and overreaction in general, please.
Robot Australis - generally helpful, but I want to know why the fuck they had a fabulous pink laser cannon that was apparently lethal. If Ray gave them an unlock module, this should have been cleared with Command staff; to my knowledge that's contraband outside Science. If it's not; no other 'borg types possess lethal weaponry without emagging or an unlock module, so it's Not Cool for someone to apparently have their own sprites and unfettered access to something other loadouts don't have period. If I missed this request or there are some other extenuating circumstances involved it'd be nice to know.
Det. Rachel Wheeler - I don't really have anything good or bad to say here, save that you did a solid job as an officer considering the circumstances - especially considering you were a Detective thrust into a shitstorm. On the other hand you did ask for permission to shoot Amaranta, which was not cool. Oh, and there was that goofing off with the crystal sword at one point. So I guess I actually do have a couple of bad things to say.
Dr. Ray Greyson - could have done without the charging off ahead. I was hoping for a little more cohesion in our team, but instead it was a hot mess because a Scientist ran ahead and I had to play catchup. Props for bringing tools, less props for blocking my line of fire.
Dr. Amaranta Ignacia - daring anomalist, who will be receiving a formal written apology from the SecCom and a clearance of all charges beyond a sternly-worded request to be a little more formal and thorough when it comes to testing things with EMP effects, if at all possible, please, thanks. If Central presses anything about Officer Electrum getting blatted then that's on them.
QM Brock Stall - well 'ard quartermaster. Took an accidental shotgun slug to the chest(!) and kept on kickin' without much injury. Not much else to add here.
and finally
Off. Electrum - ye shall be missed... until your next shift. Have fun growing those legs? I should have grabbed more of your stuff when Fang started pulling me off, but Brock was yelling about crowbars and I wanted to try to help them first.

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final tl;dr - went pretty well overall, but I personally would've liked more time to give more opportunities to get other folks from the other departments involved, plus maybe some kind of science team deployed from Central to recover the artefact and investigate the site.

[AvaricePleonexia]

Woah. Cool. Thanks for giving us feedback / talking about how a round went and what you felt might've improved the experience. I think this is the first time anyone has ever done this in such a constructive manner. Thank you for being a dime a dozen.