Assistants... actually assisting.

[christ110]

Irl, we tax cigarettes and give out tax breaks for charitable donations.
A problem was brought up in the community meeting that assistants are kinda shitters. We can use negative reinforcement to attempt to curb poor behavior, but lets instead make it easier for assistants to help others.
I propose a system where players in normal jobs can share access with assistants. By swiping (using) the assistant ID on the doctor/engineer/scientist/etc's card (or vice versa), access can be added.

now, as nothing has been coded in, there are a few ways we can balance and tweak this:

how many cards can the assistant gain access from? can he spend the entire shift getting all access lite by just asking to help people, and running off when they aquire access?

is access granting permanent or is it temporary? does it last 10 minutes? configurable? maybe it gets overridden if you swipe a second card?

how much departmental access should assistants get from it? as much as the user has? base dept access? a geneticist might grant an assistant access, so should that let them into medbay, but no special rooms? or genetics too, because it was a geneticist?

can this apply to anyone? or should it be limited to assistant ID's? if it must be limited to assistants, must they have the job title, or can it just apply to anyone who's been demoted to maint access only?


if we streamline the process for assistants to actually... assist, then I think it will reduce the occurences of greytiding, or at the very least, make things a little nicer for the few assistants who decided to actually RP.

[wesoda25]

The HOP exists???? If you want to play a job, you select the job??? It would really only work for new players I’d think. Plus you’re proposing agent ID card lite.

I personally play assistant when I want to do a meme, fuck around, etc, which I feel goes for most of the server. At best we’ll have a couple people doing this, while half just steal your ID to give themselves more access.

[4dplanner]

This would 100% just lead to assistants tabling people for access

[christ110]

yes, the hop exists as a role. the hop doesnt always exist as a played character however. The purpose of this is to make it easier for people to assist, and whilst you personally use assistant as a meme, I don't think that can extend to most of the server. for example, I dont.

[wesoda25]

Ok then what do you play assistant for? Other than riding other lizards, of course. HOP not existing sucks, if you wanna assist someone that much you can ask them to open doors for you.

It literally would just turn assistants ID cards into agent ID cards, and make HOP an even more boring since no one would come to you anymore.

[Screemonster]

This would 100% just lead to assistants tabling people for access

[Cobby]

The easiest option would be to make the already-existing ID console for each individual department more streamlined.

[NoxVS]

Assistants being shitters wont change because they can get more access. If that would change it they would just pick normal jobs. Assistants do what they do because its fun. In fact its the easiest source of non antag fun. Most jobs are boring to do and offer little to no reward for actually doing it, so they instead run around with no responsibility looking for a way to enjoy the game because its not enjoyable for them to be a doctor or engineer or whatever. The way to fix assistants is to make other jobs fun

[MisterPerson]

This would 100% just lead to assistants tabling people for access

While I'm against the idea, this is a terrible argument. They can already table you to steal your ID. If anything this idea actually helps out a bit since the assistant will have a good reason to give you your ID back.

[Screemonster]

right now, stealing someone's ID is explicitly listed on the rules page as an example of shit you don't get to complain about if they kill you for it, whereas this will lead to people taking IDs, copying access, throwing the ID back, and ahelping any subsequent retaliation because "I GAVE IT BACK"

[Vile Beggar]

Goon had department assistants, turns out they did nothing but make stuff worse, since all they did was steal everything not bolted down in their respective department.
If this was added in I don't think it would help much since who wouldn't want to take a role which is practically just assistant with more access.

[confused rock]

Gee, I sure hate when assistants type *wag and spend the whole round running around naked. That's pretty annoying.

I kinda wish we completely trashed the hop and made each head of staff able to promote people into their own department, the cap able to handle shit on a broader scale. QM new hop.

[Anonmare]

G U E S T
P A S S E S

[Anuv]

Have an assistant console outside the HoP office. Each department has one or a few slots. Choose one when you join as assistant. Very limited access is then added on to your ID.

[teepeepee]

they'll just choose engineering to get free insuls

[datorangebottle]

Irl, we tax cigarettes and give out tax breaks for charitable donations.
A problem was brought up in the community meeting that assistants are kinda shitters. We can use negative reinforcement to attempt to curb poor behavior, but lets instead make it easier for assistants to help others.
I propose a system where players in normal jobs can share access with assistants. By swiping (using) the assistant ID on the doctor/engineer/scientist/etc's card (or vice versa), access can be added.

now, as nothing has been coded in, there are a few ways we can balance and tweak this:

how many cards can the assistant gain access from? can he spend the entire shift getting all access lite by just asking to help people, and running off when they aquire access?

is access granting permanent or is it temporary? does it last 10 minutes? configurable? maybe it gets overridden if you swipe a second card?

how much departmental access should assistants get from it? as much as the user has? base dept access? a geneticist might grant an assistant access, so should that let them into medbay, but no special rooms? or genetics too, because it was a geneticist?

can this apply to anyone? or should it be limited to assistant ID's? if it must be limited to assistants, must they have the job title, or can it just apply to anyone who's been demoted to maint access only?


if we streamline the process for assistants to actually... assist, then I think it will reduce the occurences of greytiding, or at the very least, make things a little nicer for the few assistants who decided to actually RP.

or you could literally do it like sec where an assistant is assigned to a department and has orders(roundstart text) to help them however necessary, procuring tools, delivering stuff, etc. Imagine assistants grabbing supplies for robotics early on, delivering upgrades to the crew, moving wood to other places, helping miners unload their ores so thy can just get back to work...

[Devily]

or you could literally do it like sec where an assistant is assigned to a department and has orders(roundstart text) to help them however necessary, procuring tools, delivering stuff, etc. Imagine assistants grabbing supplies for robotics early on, delivering upgrades to the crew, moving wood to other places, helping miners unload their ores so thy can just get back to work...

This makes a lot of sense.
Give assistants a department they are "loyal" to.

[cocothegogo]

anything that can be abused WILL be abused

[Vile Beggar]

anything that can be abused WILL be abused

[MisterPerson]

If someone wanted to "assist engineering" they'd just be an engineer. Assistants don't want to assist, that's why they're assistants.

[Yakumo_Chen]

Assistants don't deserve anything but a swift push into space, while nude.

[Gamarr]

Just remove them.
The assistants that is.

[NoxVS]

Just remove them.
The assistants that is.

They move to engineering. Now you have yellowtiders with more access and tools to cause more damage, plus the engine is never set up because everyone wants to yellowtide

[Yakumo_Chen]

Engineers already need to start getting jobbanned for not doing their job most shifts. On a typical round you can almost always find one roundstart AFK engineer and one who takes a hardsuit and fucks off. Never will you see an engineer doing the solars.

God forbid one of them actually sets up the engine.

Or even just wrenches the cannisters and puts tanks in the collectors because the AI can literally do 90% of the work for them.

This is getting off tangent but if engineers (and atmos techs, literally all they have to do is set a few pumps to max output) are consistently and collectively not spending five minutes to do a braindead simple task, those players shouldn't get the option of wasting the job slot.

[MisterPerson]

Doing those tasks isn't fun, which is why they're not getting done.

[Lumbermancer]

But Singularity Engine was harder and more time consuming to set up, and yet it was never a problem.

[somerandomguy]

>"ban atmos techs that don't set the pumps"
>jobbanning for not following the optimal setup
What's next, jobbanning scientists that don't research advanced mining roundstart?

@lumbermancer singulo was when
a) people actually rp'd
b) messing it up would destroy the station
c) rounds were long enough that the roundstart 30 minutes of power didn't last the whole round

[wesoda25]

Yakumo is being a dramatic cunt, engine is pretty much always set up (on bagil at least). Solars are boring and not a necessity, but I still see people doing them pretty often.

But I agree cunts who fuck off and never do their one job should get banned.

[PKPenguin321]

But Singularity Engine was harder and more time consuming to set up, and yet it was never a problem.

The singularity was fun and cool

Anyways no we're not gonna job ban people for ditching their jobs. Player freedom and "running off from your job is now a hard tell that you're an antag because nonantags would get banned for it" are two reasons off the top of my head. Just lynch the engineers if they're being shitters

[Xeroxemnas]

Just lynch the engineers if they're being shitters

>lynch engineer for being a faggot
>he ahelps and I get banned instead

gee thanks what wonderful advice.

[PKPenguin321]

Just lynch the engineers if they're being shitters

>lynch engineer for being a faggot
>he ahelps and I get banned instead

gee thanks what wonderful advice.

t. never tried it

[Mickyan]

It's impossible to reliably play assistant as the job description would imply, even for those few that would actually want to.
I like doing odd jobs as assistant, but it typically means spending most of the round going back and forth between departments asking if someone needs help.

What I'd really like is an option to send a PDA message to all assistants by using a request console so if you need help you can easily get in touch with that one assistant on the whole server who's interested in helping

[Yakumo_Chen]

>"ban atmos techs that don't set the pumps"
>jobbanning for not following the optimal setup

Yakumo is being a dramatic cunt, engine is pretty much always set up (on bagil at least). Solars are boring and not a necessity, but I still see people doing them pretty often.

But I agree cunts who fuck off and never do their one job should get banned.

It's not a big deal when even one person bothers to help but I've had countless rounds as cyborg or AI where even if I do the absolute basic setup of the engine sans the collectors, the whole department refuses to come in and help, with 3-5 engineers on the manifest. Solars don't get done, nobody does engine, no power. Go and look for engineers. One has suicided. One has gone AFK. Two are running around doing nothing productive, all non-antags. This happens consistently on bagil.

The complaint about atmos is less about the "optimal setup" and more in the fact that they, like engineers, all immediately clear the department and do fuck-all with atmos for the entire round. I remember this being consistent with Aieet Mahpoo as he would play atmos literally just to antag roll and flood distro, and every time he didn't get antag he would just immediately go and grief the station until someone killed him.

Anyways no we're not gonna job ban people for ditching their jobs. Player freedom and "running off from your job is now a hard tell that you're an antag because nonantags would get banned for it" are two reasons off the top of my head. Just lynch the engineers if they're being shitters

If they're doing it consistently, every round, they should. If they want to go play a job where they have no responsibility, there's Assistant.

[Dr_bee]

Anyways no we're not gonna job ban people for ditching their jobs. Player freedom and "running off from your job is now a hard tell that you're an antag because nonantags would get banned for it" are two reasons off the top of my head. Just lynch the engineers if they're being shitters

If they're doing it consistently, every round, they should. If they want to go play a job where they have no responsibility, there's Assistant.

I agree with you but this is pretty much unenforceable via admins. It would require security actually have the time and will to enforce people who commit dereliction of duty, which they almost never do.

I am not smart enough to come up with either a policy or design decision that could change this trend.

[MisterPerson]

Anyways no we're not gonna job ban people for ditching their jobs. Player freedom and "running off from your job is now a hard tell that you're an antag because nonantags would get banned for it" are two reasons off the top of my head. Just lynch the engineers if they're being shitters

If they're doing it consistently, every round, they should. If they want to go play a job where they have no responsibility, there's Assistant.

I agree with you but this is pretty much unenforceable via admins. It would require security actually have the time and will to enforce people who commit dereliction of duty, which they almost never do.

I am not smart enough to come up with either a policy or design decision that could change this trend.

You cannot force someone to do something they don't want to do. Either make them want to do it or change it so they don't have to do it at all.

[Gamarr]

Repetitive tasks that have to be done every single round.
For a station that don't care whether you live or die.
An apathetic crew that'll soon as steal your gloves as look at you.
Maybe the only ones who consistently appreciate you might be the snyths.
However this is due to them not having hands and being able to do it themselves.

If there is no incentive and no gameplay element to force it, with no coherent policy for others to deal with them, what do you really do?
Burn Engineering down is the obvious answer because there doesn't appear to be one.

[PKPenguin321]

Repetitive tasks that have to be done every single round.
For a station that don't care whether you live or die.
An apathetic crew that'll soon as steal your gloves as look at you.
Maybe the only ones who consistently appreciate you might be the snyths.
However this is due to them not having hands and being able to do it themselves.

If there is no incentive and no gameplay element to force it, with no coherent policy for others to deal with them, what do you really do?
Burn Engineering down is the obvious answer because there doesn't appear to be one.

rare boondoggle collected

[Jalleo]

But Singularity Engine was harder and more time consuming to set up, and yet it was never a problem.

Correction. People did get bored of the singularity engine. There were shifts it wasnt setup. There were even more shifts when it was setup incorrectly due to human error. There were even more shifts where people didn't realize that and the AI was destroyed by the singularity.

[Ayy Lemoh]

Or even just wrenches the cannisters and puts tanks in the collectors because the AI can literally do 90% of the work for them.

You can do that?

Shit, why didn't anyone just say so. Now the SM isn't as scary as it seems to be as long as I know which canisters are supposed to be wrenched.

This isn't me being a sarcastic asshole. I genuinely don't understand atmos besides some real basic shit like how to put air into an oxygen tank or you can heat/cool gas to make bombs.

[Dr_bee]

Or even just wrenches the cannisters and puts tanks in the collectors because the AI can literally do 90% of the work for them.

You can do that?

Shit, why didn't anyone just say so. Now the SM isn't as scary as it seems to be as long as I know which canisters are supposed to be wrenched.

This isn't me being a sarcastic asshole. I genuinely don't understand atmos besides some real basic shit like how to put air into an oxygen tank or you can heat/cool gas to make bombs.

The default SM setup is stable but not efficent. If you turn all the pumps on max and add the nitrogen it will generate power. What makes the SM better than other engines is you can modifying it to make the gas flow more efficient to make it more resistant to minor sabotage, or mess with the gas mix to run the engine at stupidly high CO2 levels. Or you can turn the engine into a BZ and Pluox generator. Etc etc.

SM actually has some mechanical depth to it along with the fact that sabotage doesnt mean an instant shuttle call.

[somerandomguy]

It's not like you need efficiency since power is so abundant

If there was the PTL, on the other hand...

[Yakumo_Chen]

Anyways no we're not gonna job ban people for ditching their jobs. Player freedom and "running off from your job is now a hard tell that you're an antag because nonantags would get banned for it" are two reasons off the top of my head. Just lynch the engineers if they're being shitters

If they're doing it consistently, every round, they should. If they want to go play a job where they have no responsibility, there's Assistant.

I agree with you but this is pretty much unenforceable via admins. It would require security actually have the time and will to enforce people who commit dereliction of duty, which they almost never do.

I am not smart enough to come up with either a policy or design decision that could change this trend.

We already have this precedent with antag rolling though. Admins can just start handing out notes to engis who AFK roundstart or consistently over several rounds fuck off and make no attempt to do their job

[somerandomguy]

Yeah but at that level of rp we'd start banning validhunters too

[Yakumo_Chen]

It's almost like if you play a job that actively fucks over the station by you not doing your job, you shouldn't be able to access it?