Discussion, not just submission

Sup sarp,

I've just been thinking - a terrible affliction of course - that discussion may be ideal, not just submission.

In this way, complete work wouldn't be carved so much as incomplete work sculpted. Time wouldn't be wasted on the grandiose but spent on attaining what to everyone but the originator would be brutally obvious, negating cognitive dissonance.

Now for the meta part:

Ask yourself:
What nonsense is this?
Is this really a good idea?
What do I like or dislike about this?
Do I have any ideas how it could work?
Could it get strong technical writers to help people who are inspired who otherwise wouldn't?
What am I doing here?
These aren't my glasses!

That might be a good idea. I always find that discussing an idea, even discussing it with the objects on my desk or with my mother (who cannot do sci fi at all) who sits just across from me sometimes to help me flesh out the idea.

Generally, talking to cooperative people helps make an idea better, eventually rounding it into something workable.

We need a pub then, since lots of good ideas are conceived down at the pub.

Maybe an offshoot of the starlight lounge? *shrug*

Before I came to SARP I was part of a forum where ship designs were often discussed and critiqued in minute detail. It was a friendly place where everyone appreciated the creators work and offered suggestions or spotted problems to make each design the best it could be. When I first came to SARP, I made the mistake of assuming it would be somewhat similar. (Nash spent a lot of time and effort helping me find my feet in those early days, for which I'm eternally grateful)

I'm not sure if SARP is this kind of place. People here can get immediately negative to submissions with almost no warning. How would the forum consistently react to the raw nugget form of an idea, with no refining and no softening? I'm afraid I cannot yet say with absolute certainty that they will take it well.

Maybe in time and with exposure this will change. So I think a forum for this would be a good idea, instead of just having the submissions form the way it is now where only relatively finalized ideas go for yay-or-nay peer review.

I often have new designs for the Star Army pushed onto me, even as I continue to reduce the vast numbers of ship classes and items the Star Army is using. I would love discussion at an early stage so I could clarify what is needed and what isn't. I think that by working together we can make better submissions; although we should keep in mind that many submissions are (or at least start as) one member's personal pet project. Uso, while he was here, made a lot of great stuff for Nepleslia, but half of it went unused because he made it without talking to anyone and never saw what adjustments were needed to make it work for the Nepleslian faction as a whole. It's the same with Arieg's Nepleslian Guard stuff. He made all this gear and then discussed it later only to find out people we're interested in a guard force in the first place, which meant a lot of wasted effort for Arieg.

Discussion has always been an option on Star Army. Are you suggesting you make it a requirement? I'm wary of adding more red tape to the site.

Requirement? No. Creative option with the possibility of generating enthusiasm and early peer review at the first stages when changes are easier to make? Maybe. To get opinions? Definitely.

If anyone has been on at the same time that I've been creating stuff, you'll know that I do this on IRC to the point of madness. Others I have spitballed with and bounced ideas off of. I'm sure, in fact I know other players are guilty of this as well.

Moving it to the forum simply ratifies this procedure and exposes it to a greater audience.

I'm suggesting we make another sub-board under submissions & suggestions marked prototyping or drawing-board, where there's an emphasis on making things constructively with users adding suggestions and helping eachother rather than stripping stuff out.

Importantly, it is not mandatory.

Stuff like

'Okay, I want to work on such and such a class ship. Mind helping?', followed by a short design brief of its ranges and function. This could be followed by suggestions of equipment to add to the submission.

There can be a back and forth of questions between the creator and the userbase in terms of tech questions, game/stat balancing, roleplay questions, history questions and exploring interest.

The difference is submissions can sit here for months provided a user is willing to continue asking and refining and the submission sits in the public eye so when it finally makes it to submission its very well rounded.

This is of course optional and might be incredibly helpful for things like character concepting for new players and developing kit the userbase actually *wants*.

If a submission is rejected but not catastrophically, we can send it back to the drawing-board and move the topic.

Why not do that sort of discussion in the underutilized threads of the Business and Manufacturing Discussion forum? For things other than products, the Roleplay and Setting Discussion forum would be the right place.

Because nobody wants to contribute to the work of a rival company in game so as a result the best minds in your fictional field won't want to comment.

Plus, its a sub-forum noone but company-owners check. And what if you only want to fool around with ideas for the sake of entertainment, not form a concrete submission out of it? And there's STILL nowhere you can spitball drawing-board with characters.

Srsly, the business/manufacturing is 'Here's what we're mostly finished making'.

Also goddamn you need to undo this awful edit-locking. I used to use my Bus/man page a lot but now I can't edit stuff its been icy cold because I don't want people to have to read page after page and instead just update stuff so the two posts that are there read like realtime updates of the company status.

I think that just posting in the setting discussion works for this well enough. The community has also grown since this was made and I notice a lot that people are willing to ask if things are necessary, exemplified recently, propose something in setting discussion and are told what boundaries they need to stay within from there.