nanotrasen retheme/rebrand

[corresp0nd]

tldr; reconsider why the station is even there and wtf nanotrasen is doing. i hate the current approach of a vague "research" so this rethemes nt to be a defense contractor corpo (and also considers all the ways the game needs to change in order to actually communicate this)

pleaseeee review this but it is still a wip. this is my first draft sooooooooo i might rewrite it (and i need to expand on the shit i didnt)

[TheHolyAegis]

The only thing I can imagine plasma with science is the anomaly generator. But I feel like fully recreating the core mechanic of science is a bit much?

[MoxieIsMoxie]

I think it is important to note that NT is a conglomerate. They are not a company, they are THE company. They have a hand in every market, in every scientific field, and every corner of the galaxy. What may seem like other companies can still be owned or mostly owned by NT. In the grand scheme of things, the station we play on is just another small blip on the radar.

I think this idea has merit, though. Maybe not so much on the NT side, but the station side. Having a station designed purpose beyond a research outpost and being owned by subsidiaries would be the peak. Then the stations would be different not only in layout but also in function.

[ferynn]

I think the research station aspect is fundamentally good to the conception of the station. Not as them learning how to make jaws of life and the like, but keeping those as a "licensing reward" for gathering data in fucked up dangerous experiments for further analysis.

It does make sense that NT would want to keep extremely hazardous research isolated, in a station that they could quarantine or even nuke if needed. It explains why there's a nuke on station. It gives a reason for there being such a well stocked medical system.

Regarding other aspects, why like cargo exists, all that needs to be said is that NT is super cheap and wants to make profits on things they "really" shouldn't need to if they were being truly efficient in. That's why the support is so sparse.

It's meant to be a disposable, relatively self sustaining outpost for them to do all the weird science they want.

All the repeated fucking with reality also gives a reason for why so many magical antags focus on the station itself. Science keeps messing with the fabric of reality, and it lets other things bleed through.

[willowzeta]

I think Moxie and Ferynn have said what I would have, calling Nanotrasen an "defense contractor" is like, say, calling Comcast a "cable provider". It's not strictly inaccurate, but it undermines the bigger picture in that Nanotrasen likely has millions of stations and trillions of employees (if not greater). Nanotrasen is, at this point, some kind of quasi-governmental organization, likely with entire solar systems and vast parsecs of open space under their direct jurisdiction. One tiny fuckass mass-produced station in the middle of nowhere isn't gonna register anything more than a single readout going dead on some regional manager's monitoring console.

I hope to eventually give a proper reframing of bluespace research and why things are the way they are in-setting whenever I get around to writing my science doc.

[ferynn]

I do think tying sec more to a Nanotrasen military theme would be good. It’s the sovereign entity out there, and it would be better to drill home that space law is Nanotrasen’s law they’re applying

[MoxieIsMoxie]

It is on brand for them to own a private military, probably even a few. We already have ERT and Deathsquad, and I liked the closed doc that expanded on them.

In addition to ferynns comment, it would also make the station feel less civilian and more outpost-like.

[lukachukai2]

the crew are the kerbals and nanotrasen owns the kerbal space program

[corresp0nd]

i would like to clarify that this isn't meant to be an explanation of the current way nt works or anything. i think the prior comments are fair, but i also feel like they lean a little bit much into trying to keep the setting the same as before. which is what im trying to change, not keep. i picked using lockheed martin as an example because it's an easy way to explain to someone what the setting is supposed to be like, even if they dont particularly know how these giant corpos work and fuck over the world and their workers. im willing to part on the military industrial complex aspect of it, but my point is that i think letting the setting be vague kind of sets our players up for failure. nt fucking over everything should take conscious effort to ignore, and the current setting and lore is often so vague that like. none of it matters unless you seek it out.

Regarding other aspects, why like cargo exists, all that needs to be said is that NT is super cheap and wants to make profits on things they "really" shouldn't need to if they were being truly efficient in. That's why the support is so sparse.

this i will fight on though. we should rebrand parts of the station to be outsourced and ten levels down contracting fraud. i want to see sysco branding on food and amazon logos on mail--all "outsourced" to large corpos then passed down through twenty layers of contracts. i dont think this would actually change gameplay because all of this shit would be fulfilled by local workers, just for pennies in comparison to the original contracts. it would maybe be interesting to incorporate ways for players to be "contracted" by non-nt companies while still working on the station, though. maybe ill build on that more i dunno

[Homingpenguins]

I've always believed that ss13 and 14 are truly plasma research facilities, but not in the way they tell the crew. Sure the anomaly and artifact data are useful, but what NT is actually researching is the long term effects of plasma exposure. Clearly the people working in the stations are all on some level insane, this is due to the constant shifts on the station where micromoles of plasma are always present. Scrubbers cant be perfect (or are purposefully not). Which slowly leads humanoids to turn insane, and who knows what else.

I also believe around half of the antagonists on the station are fabricated by NT themselves to stir the pot and to encourage situations otherwise hard to test unnaturally. to what extent the fabrications go can be left up to the player. Things like cults and heretics are definitely real, and there are a lot of them on the stations, but things like basic traitors? They COULD be real, but most of the time they are probably planted by NT pretending to be the Syndicate directing the unknowing traitor.

This can also explain why they selectively erase so many memories. Everyone has been a traitor at least once, they have to wipe their memories of doing that. This explains accidental (non blatant) metashield breaks, sometimes the mind wipe isn't fully done correct. [Though this could be dialed WAY back to prevent players from purposefully "Accidentally" breaking metashield, and is likely better left out altogether.]. The mind wipes will also explain why literally none of the crew ever know what the true goal of the station is, a mostly isolated facility testing highly dangerous and volatile plasma and its effects on humanoids.

As for the plasma itself, Nanotrasen encourages its use EVERYWHERE. to "experiment" with it, in both science and atmospherics. But plasma also appears in liquid form in chemistry. we literally make medications with it. Just look at what plasma does to liquid oxygen. It catalyzes pure oxygen into dexalin. There is no way being in the mere presence of plasma doesn't wreck at least some kind of havoc on the body.

For as much as NT loves to be cheep and slack on the things they give the crew, they do in fact rebuild the entire station after every shift to its standard design, that cant be cheep. Or at least as cheep as they wish to have an image of. They are fully invested in the outcome of this project, but still want to keep the appearance of cheep for the experiment.

Also I liked the above opinion on licensing the research rewards, makes science make sense.